Yellow tang fish, also called lemon sailfin, dance and dart around coral heads like jewels adorning a pretty bland seascape. They also graze the reef, keeping it healthy.
Shaun Moss, the executive director of Hawaiʻi Pacific University’s Oceanic Institute, shared the latest on an upcoming release of several hundred juvenile yellow tang in the waters off Windward Oʻahu.
"They've been tremendously overfished in recent decades. So this is a real opportunity to provide another tool in the toolbox for marine conservation," Moss said.
He said aquaculturing yellow tang in captivity has been a 20-year journey, full of solving fertilization and food issues.
The institute initially set out to provide an alternative to wild-caught yellow tang. It also received funding to provide yellow tang to aquariums and conservation centers.
"Now, up until I think pre-COVID, Hawaiʻi was kind of the epicenter for the collection and sale of yellow tang into the global aquarium trade. Wild collectors were getting about 300,000 to 400,000 a year off the Kailua-Kona Coast on the Big Island," Moss told HPR.
After distributing yellow tang to the aquariums, the institute still had extra fish, so it asked the state Department of Land and Natural Resources about releasing them into the wild.
"This first release is probably going to be more symbolic than impactful. Our numbers are small, but again, it's showing people, showing the community, showing the state that, 'Hey, look, we're developing this really novel approach to coral reef health,ʻ" he said.
"These coral reefs are assaulted, and so anything we can do, any tools we can develop to help nurture these very important ecosystems along, I think, is a worthy endeavor."
Moss said that though the institute is not expecting any problems, a state biologist will inspect the fish to ensure they're healthy and not carrying any pathogens.
He said this is the first known stock enhancement release of fish, not for eating, but to help protect the reef.
"We'll release them in areas where we think the habitat is suitable for them to be protected against predators, but we're, again, cautiously optimistic it will actually have an impact," Moss added. "What we're hoping is we get this out into the general public, and the state gets interested in funding the research to do a more robust kind of stock enhancement program, not only of fish for ecosystem service provision, like the yellow tang, but food fish."
This interview aired on The Conversation on Oct. 29, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
