Yeah, unreal off Moloka'i. Ulua in shallow reef! There have been problems with the exotic fish industry with guys on scuba collecting choke fish and depleting exotic species...these guys have been chased from the waters here on BI and other islands...usually kooks from the mainland looking to make money! But local spear fishermen usually get respect no mattah where you dive. We all have our secret or family hunting grounds, but when other divers show up its all in the attitude of ethics and respect for a spot and its fishermen before any conflict arises. And then it's usually the commercial guys that get quoted in the news...you know the ones that are hauling in fish by the tons! A divers kui is not usually what's responsible for depleting the fish. It's usually higher volume fishing operations. I've hunted reefs in Fiji, Samoa, Carribean, that have been fished out by constant harvesting and no conservation methods for replenishing fish populations. But that's usually reefs of a village where the sustenance fisherman and divers don't venture very far away from their spots. I've found even in these areas that there are still fish, they're just very smart and make themselves hard to find. But as I've ventured beyond local reef spots further away from the overfished village areas, the fish populations get thicker. In Samoa, the villages now have preserve areas within their reef that are off limits to any fishing. Akamai! Smart. The funniest thing I've seen was in the Bahamas. One local Bahamian swimming with a rubbish can scooping up lobsters during the closed season! But I digress.
Daryl guys are not the problem. And from talking with my cuz, it sounds like the localism was more to keep guys away from "other agricultural and harvesting" ventures! :nono:
Yeah, overfishing is a problem here in Belize too. There are laws but no money for enforcement.
But MPAs, or preserves do work. My buddy has a resort in the west central Philippines, which is probably one of the most overfished places anywhere, (dynamite, cyanide etc) and they made a preserve back in the 90s. The locals all respect it and wow....the fish have made a comeback. All the fishermen benefitted.
But MPAs haven't taken hold in Hawaii so much, or so my daughter tells me. It's the "my father's family fished here and his father before him and no one can tell me I can't fish here" attitude that many have. Her grandfather, Jack Randall, has done a lot of studies on this and made recommendations to Hawaii officials but it hasn't happened.
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