The Honolulu City Council could join other county councils in opposing aquarium fishing.
The city council is moving along a pair of resolutions urging state-level policymakers to prohibit the collection of fish in the state for the commercial aquarium trade. One urges the state Board of Land and Natural Resources to adopt rules banning aquarium fishing, and the other is directed at the state Legislature.
“We have decades of scientific research, court decisions, and lived community experience demonstrating the ecological and cultural costs of removing fish and invertebrates for export into the extractive aquarium collection industry,” said Lisa Bishop, president of the nonprofit Friends of Hanauma Bay, who testified Thursday in support of the measures.
She added, “It is past time for the DLNR to start protecting our marine wildlife as a public trust asset for current and future Hawaiʻi residents.”
The resolutions don’t carry much weight formally, but county-level measures have become the latest platforms for Hawaiʻi’s yearslong struggle over aquarium fishing regulations — and have so far shown more support for a ban.
The Hawaiʻi County Council adopted a similar resolution in January. Maui County Council did so in March, and the Kauaʻi council adopted its own just last week.
Much of the actual rulemaking has come at the state level.
Court decisions stemming from decisions at the BLNR had put a hold on aquarium fishing in Hawaiʻi since 2021, and earlier for the West Hawaiʻi Regional Fishing Management Area. The land board is currently working on rulemaking for aquarium fish collection, though the industry has stopped statewide since 2021.
There was also a popular measure at the state Legislature this year proposing to ban aquarium fishing, though that measure eventually failed.
Proponents of aquarium fishing have argued that the industry is sustainable, while those in favor of the ban have said that the trade has led to declines in the populations of the targeted fish species — such as lauʻīpala, or the yellow tang, and kole, or the goldring surgeonfish — and the overall health of Hawaiʻi’s reefs.
