We live in a world of mare liberum, or freedom of the seas. For many of us, the ocean is a refuge, a place of complete freedom where our culture and island environment co-mingle. On the reefs in Hawai'i we can partake in the myriad aqueous joys our ocean provides. We can surf, dive, swim, paddle canoes, sail boats and, of course, we can fish. Unlike many ocean activities, however, the freedom to fish hasn't always existed. What is now noa, or open and free to all, was once subject to the sanctions of fierce warriors, erudite elders and compassionate tenders of the land and seaÜthe konohiki of Hawai'i.
In old Hawai'i, konohiki were masterful managers who possessed a deep knowledge of the natural resources of their ahupua'a. The konohiki functioned as the stewards of their resources and communities, which in the holistic native Hawaiian worldview are inseparable and intertwined. They were appointed by the ali'i and charged with safeguarding the production and perpetuation of land and sea resources in their ahupua'a. These resource rights were viewed as belonging not to the current residents, but to their children, and thus the management of these resources carried with them a burden of protecting the lives and futures of the next generation.
The ahupua'a and konohiki enabled the Hawaiian population to expand throughout the archipelago. As observed by James Cook, Hawai'i's population was denser than any he encountered throughout the Pacific. The native Hawaiian management systems evolved to be highly adapted for the sustainable use of the islands' ecosystems. At the helm was a cadre of konohiki that spearheaded the transformation of arable land into vast plantations, engineered fishponds to produce copious returns and oversaw a large population, the entirety of which was engaged in some form of fishing. But with the arrival of Westerners the customary ownership of land and sea was confronted with the foreign notion of private property rights, which began to steadily erode customary norms of land and sea tenure.
The konohiki experienced its first major challenge in 1819, when the indigenous kapu system was abolished and customary restrictions on consumption were removed. Having already weathered massive epidemics of diseases resulting in catastrophic losses of their native people, the Hawaiian monarchs increasingly sought new ways to protect their people and culture while simultaneously ushering their islands into the capitalist economies of the Pacific. It was a difficult task. Depopulation was coupled with increasingly aggressive mercantile interests, religious proselytizing by missionaries and the constant threat of overthrow by foreign powers seeking resources across the Pacific.
In 1839, Kamehameha III formally defined the ancient fishing rights and practices of the Hawaiian people in the Kingdom of Hawai'i Constitution. According to ethnographer Kepa Maly, the King "distributed the fishing grounds and resources between himself, the chiefs and the people of the land. The law granted fisheries from nearshore, to those of the deep ocean, beyond the sight of land, to the common people in general. He also specifically noted that fisheries on coral reefs fronting various lands were for the konohiki and the people who lived on their given lands..." In doing so, Kamehameha III secured native Hawaiian fishing rights in the evolving western legal system of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Nearly a decade later, under intense pressure from American business interests, the Hawaiian monarchy initiated the Great Mahele, converting land ownership to the fee-simple standard of Western nations. Large business interests took control of huge swaths of territory. The Mahele 'Aina dictated a process by which claims were required to be filed in order to secure ancestral lands and native Hawaiians filed claims for over 1,200 fisheries rights.
Based on the records in the register and testimony volumes of the Land Commission, it is clear there was a strong belief on the part of Hawai'i's indigenous population that fisheries belonged to the residents of ahupua'a. Drawing on their extensive knowledge, the konohiki that filed claims provided rich descriptions of the resources they managed and detailed understanding of the boundaries of their fisheries rights. After the Mahele, konohiki were required to issue public notice identifying the i'a ho'omalu (protected or kapu fish) of their choice and taboos were indicated by the traditional placement of hau branches along the shoreline. Unfortunately, a great number of Hawaiians did not participate in the Mahele process and were disposed of their ancestral lands and fisheries.
Seven years after the Hawaiian monarchy was illegally overthrown, the Organic Act enshrined Hawai'i as a Territory of the U.S. Writing in 1903, U.S. Bureau of Fisheries statistician John Nathan Cobb remarked on the "unusual" fishery rights he found in Hawai'i: "Probably the most peculiar feature of the Hawaiian fisheries is the well-developed principle of the private ownership of the fishes found in the open sea and bays to within a certain prescribed distance from shore."
At the turn of the century, fishing rights covered the entirety of the reef fronting the land of a coastal owner and if no reef existed, the owner held rights to sea resources one mile offshore. While some owners made profits renting their reef areas for commercial fishing, many still practiced traditional practices of subsistence fishing at the community level, particularly in areas that were far from the commercial fish markets in ports.
Cobb further remarked, "In accordance with law [Organic Act of 1900], the fishery rights will cease on June 14, 1903."
Despite the stipulations of the Organic Act, many owners successfully retained their fishery rights throughout the first half of the 20th century, even though the territorial government serially condemned these rights. A final blow was dealt to the konohiki with the induction of Hawai'i as the 50th state in 1959.
The konohiki system carried with it not only the responsibility of resource stewardship from land to sea, but also the capability to exclude outsiders and thus limit pressures on reef resources. As konohiki fishing rights succumbed, so did the ability of communities to protect their marine ecosystems from rampant overuse and irresponsible overharvest. In most areas, Hawai'i reefs became a free-for-all, a bonanza buffet where little or no regard was given to the customs or ownership rights that developed over centuries of stewardship.
Fast-forward to today and the dire state of Hawai'i's coral reefs has increasingly invaded the public media. The synergistic threats of land-based pollution, development of coastal zones, overfishing, climate change and disease portend a difficult future not just for Hawaiian reefs, but reefs worldwide. But the recent media blitz often ignores a long history of coral reef decline that has manifested over decades to centuries in reef ecosystems, coincident with many of the changes in customary practices and traditional ownership rights in the islands' nearshore marine areas. With the demise of the konohiki and the customary marine rights of native Hawaiians came a vast and unprecedented loss of cultural knowledge about coral reef ecosystems and the species they harbor. The traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous resource managers, developed and passed down for centuries, in many respects far outweighs the knowledge amassed over just a few short decades by Western scientists.
Native Hawaiian chronology holds that the past is in front rather than behind, providing a powerful reminder for contemporary residents to constantly look to the past in order to meet the challenges of today. Within this reflective renaissance, new conservation efforts are seeking to build place-based knowledge and the local capacity to steward marine resources using konohiki principles. A common thread in these modern endeavors is the integration of traditional native Hawaiian management systems with Western science.
The Nature Conservancy's Emily Fielding has helped organize a coalition of partners to help conserve 'opihi, a species of intertidal shellfish prized as a delicacy in the archipelago. The partnership includes state and federal resource managers, local communities, native Hawaiian cultural practitioners and scientists from the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology. In Hana, Maui the traditional role of konohiki has a modern equivalent in an ahupua'a-based community board that is working to ensure there is 'opihi for both current and future generations.
One of the tools the 'opihi partnership has developed is a survey method, which is now being implemented in Hana and other select Maui locations to help determine the status of 'opihi populations. According to Fielding, "Community-based information gathering on 'opihi and the reinvigoration of traditional knowledge about 'opihi may lead to more enlightened management of the species to maintain their abundance. Around the state, it is the groups of people that work together that make change."
Efforts are also underway to integrate traditional practices into marine protected areas in the Hawaiian archipelago. In the mid-1950s, Richard Kosaki submitted a report to the Territorial Legislature discussing the complex issues surrounding existing fishery rights in Hawai'i's coastal reef areas. Over five decades later, his son, Randy Kosaki, has become a modern-day konohiki in his position as Deputy Director of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. His major task is coordinating scientific research in Papahanaumokuakea. Together with the other co-trustee agencies managing this protected area, Kosaki is taking a leadership role integrating traditional native Hawaiian practices into modern management. "Seamless ecosystem-based management is a relatively new concept for Western natural resource managers, yet it formed the basis for traditional ahupua'a management for two millennia here in Hawai'i," explains Kosaki. "The Northwest Hawaiian Islands represent a great opportunity to combine cutting edge 21st-century science with the best of this traditional knowledge and wisdom."
It has not been a simple set of circumstances that has brought us to the current situation, so it is unlikely that simple solutions exist to confront the complex problems facing Hawaiian coral reefs. Instead we must draw on a diversity of approaches to protect and preserve our reef environment. Centuries of practice in the native Hawaiian management system bear testament to the balance that can be achieved between society and nature. There is much to be learned from our predecessors in shaping the future of our cultural seascape and from modern-day konohiki equivalents who are pioneering new ways of integrating knowledge forms and building the local capacity and tenure to confront today's conservation challenges. These communities, partnerships and keystone individuals are lighting the path to a brighter future for Hawai'i's coral reefs.