When it comes to fish and coral reef ecology, Dr. Alan Friedlander is one of the most sought after experts in his field. Focusing on the conservation of nearshore fisheries and community-based fisheries management, Dr. Friedlander is leading the charge to establish marine reserves throughout Hawai'i to increase fish populations and preserve the health of entire ecosystems. His vision of sustainability is all encompassing as he works toward protecting marine areas as part of mountain to sea ahupua'a.

Declining sought-after fish stocks are a real problem in the main Hawaiian Islands. You're a proponent of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to bolster fish stocks. Why are MPAs the way to go to accomplish this?
Marine protected areas can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. There are no take marine protected areas like Hanauma Bay and Honolua Bay. There are a number of other protected areas that allow various types of activities to occur within their boundaries. Then there's community-managed areas, which also can be considered marine protected areas. What I'm advocating is more comprehensive zoning. Start with ocean zoning and eventually have mountain to sea ahupua'a. Comprehensive ocean zoning allows different uses in appropriate places.

The reason why marine protected areas as a holistic term is the preferred form of management is because that's what was utilized thousands of years ago by Pacific Islanders to manage their resources. They are managed spatially as opposed to the centralized form of management we use today, management tools that, frankly, haven't worked: bag limits, size limits, seasonal closures. They've proven to be very ineffective. The ways of past were wise. They managed things at the local level and were more in tune to the local resources. But that can't be applied statewide. You need appropriate tools in appropriate locations.

As far as no take marine protected areas go, they've proven to be highly effective. The amount of fish in Hanauma Bay is about eight times greater than outlying adjacent areas. What these spatial closures do is two things: they allow for fish to get bigger and they allow for more fish within their boundaries. There is an enhanced reproductive output. Big fish create exponentially more offspring than smaller ones. If you have these big fish in the protected areas and they have the chance to reproduce, the offspring not only repopulate the protected areas, but they repopulate adjacent areas. And that's really when you get the major benefits from marine protected areas. You have all these little keiki being produced in the protected areas and seeding the outlying areas. You're protecting not only the species, but their habitat as well, which is critical. It's conserving an ecosystem instead of managing a species on a species by species basis. We've got hundreds of species of fish in Hawai'i and you can't come up with regulations for every one of them. It's just too daunting.

People lack the understanding of the people of old. It's something that's been lost. In the past, Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders harvested in harmony with the resources. They understood the natural rhythms and processes that allowed for reproduction-not taking fish when they're most susceptible, when they're spawning. The practice is much different today because we live in a very heterogeneous society. Everybody has different goals and objectives, it's not like it was in the past. Today, many people lack the understanding of when to conserve things and when not to, and that's why the resources are in such poor shape.

Which areas are the hardest hit by overfishing and how does it impact marine environments?
Even in the main Hawaiian Islands we have a number of places that are still healthy and that's a good thing. We've got places like Kaho'olawe, Ni'ihau, north-exposed portions of the Big Island, Maui and Moloka'i. There's a lot of places around the world where coral reef ecosystems have totally collapsed like the Caribbean and parts of Southeast Asia, where the human population pressure has made it so that it's going to be difficult for the resources to recover in our lifetime.

The places that have been most impacted are, obviously, the island of O'ahu in general and more specifically, where major human populations are: the south shore, the Kane'ohe Bay area and the south shore of Maui. Those are the most egregious examples of human influence. And it's not just fishing, it's habitat destruction as well. Remember, Waikiki was an estuary 100-plus years ago, which is really important for juvenile fish, and Hawai'i Kai likewise. Those places will never revert back to being good nursery habitat.

The ecosystem implications are this: once you've fished-out the top predators, the ulua and sharks, you typically start to fish down the food chain. The herbivorous fish, the manini, the sturgeons, the uhu, are important grazers on the reef. They're the ones that are keeping the reef clean. Once the herbivores are gone, and excessive nutrients in the water around these places, limu tends to proliferate above what they would normally. Without the herbivores keeping them in check, you have the limu overgrowing the corals, the corals eventually die and the limu fills in all the pukas in the reef, that's important habitat for fishes. You have less fishes because the habitat is not preferable and the system just spirals downward.

How much protected area is necessary to get the job done?
Less than one percent of nearshore areas are protected with high conservation areas, marine protected areas or community-managed areas. If you include all the military areas where you don't have access, even so, you still have over 90 percent of all nearshore areas open access to whatever you want to do. People throw out numbers like 20 percent minimum needs to be conserved in no take areas, but a lot of people get all freaked out by that. It's a fairly large number.

We can come up with scientific advice all we want, but ultimately, these resources have a lot of cultural and social importance. In Hawai'i, probably more than any other state in the country, people recreational fish in huge numbers. And there are commercial aspects. All of these things are societal decisions. We can provide scientific advice, but they need to be a component of what goes in to the ultimate decision.

There's several community around the state that have taken charge of their resources: North Shore, Moloka'i, Ha'ena on Kaua'i, South Kona Coast. These communities have taken a more proactive approach to managing their resources, more typical of how they were managed in the past, limits or no commercial harvesting in some of these locations, no off-island exporting of resources. Remember, three-quarters of the state live on O'ahu and a lot of people have relatives. Come graduation time, opihi move from a lot of places to O'ahu. It wasn't like it was in the past. Resources aren't necessarily consumed within the locale of which they're harvested. And that's a problem because O'ahu has exceeded carrying capacity for many things, but for marine resources is one of the most critical things.

These protected areas are not meant to penalize people for their actions. They are meant as both conservation and fisheries management tools. What we also need to consider is that Hawai'i has the highest proportion of endemic marine species, about a quarter of marine species that we see on the reefs, aren't found anywhere else on Earth. We've got a global responsibility. We are the stewards of those resources and if they go extinct or become severely depleted, they're not found anywhere else. The world becomes smaller and the loss of global biodiversity becomes greater everyday, we need to conserve it and we are a global biodiversity hotspot, so we have a responsibility associated with that.

Why do unlicensed anglers and commercial fisheries typically disagree that MPAs are the solution?
MPAs are viewed as a taking. There are still a lot of people who won't acknowledge that overfishing is an issue. And in some places it's not, but in some places it very much is. But there's still not the realization that we have a fishing problem. And there's not a lot of good data because of the nature of the fisheries. If you talk to anyone who's been fishing here their whole life, especially the kupuna, they'll tell you it's not like it was when they were young.

People first need to get into agreement that there is an issue. Basically, things like bag limit, size limit, seasonal closures, those are quite easy to circumvent and enforcement is negligible at best. Even if it did exist, some of these things are so difficult to enforce that they're really not regulations at all. One of the benefits of MPAs as a management tool is that they are effective because it's much more difficult to circumvent them. Whether it's a community-managed area or a legislative no take area like Hanauma Bay, poaching is very minimal and fairly difficult to get away with.

What is the Right To Fish Bill and what is its progress in the legislature?
The Right To Fish Bill was started by recreational fishermen advocating no more marine protected areas and everyone should have full and unfettered access to fish. What we find, for bottom fish, the recreational fishery is substantially greater than the commercial fishery. And that applies to most of the shallow water fisheries as well. People don't think they're making an impact and as an individual they're not, but the sheer number of people fishing in Hawai'i means that the recreational and subsistence, they do have a substantial impact. The Right To Fish legislation is basically to give people open access to fishing.

Have MPAs proved successful?
We've just finished up a comprehensive, multi-year study of all the marine conservation areas in the state and what we showed was they all work, some better than others. The ones that work better are the ones that are more restrictive and don't allow anything to occur, the ones that are bigger and the ones that have better habitat quality.

What can communities do to help protect their local marine areas from overfishing?
The community needs to determine what the community consensus is. The community needs to recognize that these are their resources and it's something that they care about; identifying the resources of importance in the ahupua'a that are of the most concern. Are they in poorer shape now then they were in the past? What was done in the past?

How about banning gill nets and night fishing, and not just night fishing with scuba. Uhu have really taken it on the chin, even though uhu don't have chins, because they sleep at night. The big animals are males, so typically the big animals are the ones that are harvested and you end up with skewed sex ratios.

People need to understand the natural rhythms and processes like the proper sex ratios of a species. Moi are sex changers the other way, the big animals are females. Don't disrupt the natural spawning sites. People do the opposite. When they ball up and aggregate, they are easier to catch and that's when we target them.

Each ahupua'a is going to have different resources of concern, different locations that need to be protected. It comes down to localized management, knowing what your resources are, knowing how to manage them more effectively and establishing strategies that are appropriate for your particular community. Like I said, this whole thing is about people. You can have all the best science in the world, but if you're not having community buy-in then you might as well forget about it.