Thinking of Diving and Collecting in Hawaii

[ohio3ee1]

We are thinking about getting our license for commercial fishing in Hawaii. We do not have experiance catching fish, but have a good idea of how it works. We were wandering if someone would be willing to teach us some tricks a day or two and we would donate the fish we caught for that day to them. We plan on selling fish to our local pet stores in Washington State and coming to hawaii twice a month for 4/5 days. Just hoping that someone would be willing to help us learn the tricks to making it easy before we get to involved.

Thanks,
Richard

 

[scottallert]

get a hand net with a clear acrilyc(spelling) rim like a 1' by 1'
with a clear like fishing line net, that has a deep pocket.
push the fish into a cave or ledge, put the net over the hole, the scare them into the net by reaching around the ledge or hole, this is how i do it
p.s
practice holding your breath for long periods of times to get your lung capacity higher(if your free diving)
and where gloves.

 

[sunfishh]

Sounds like a great job Ohio

Also welcome to RC.

 

[Tahlequah]

In Hawaii, you can get a permit that will allow you to collect aquarium specimens. The permit is free, they do it to make room for fish in their marine sanctuaries to have a place to move to when things get overpopulated in the sanctuary.

If you were wanting to look for a cheaper route.

 

[ovakil]

I catch my fish on night dives.Have net in front of them torch behind,slowly move torch towards them & they swim straight into net.
Cheers

 

[billsreef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13996024#post13996024 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Tahlequah
In Hawaii, you can get a permit that will allow you to collect aquarium specimens. The permit is free, they do it to make room for fish in their marine sanctuaries to have a place to move to when things get overpopulated in the sanctuary.

If you were wanting to look for a cheaper route.

I expect that for commercial purposes you need something other than the free permit available for private individuals. Also the reasoning you have for thinking they give the free permit is wrong, it has nothing to do population control

 

[Tahlequah]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14002137#post14002137 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by billsreef
I expect that for commercial purposes you need something other than the free permit available for private individuals. Also the reasoning you have for thinking they give the free permit is wrong, it has nothing to do population control

Sorry, I was just going by what the book"Hawaii's Fishes : A Guide for Snorkelers, Divers, and Aquarists" by John P. Hoover said.

 

[billsreef]

That's a good book. The permit info in there, however, is only meant for non commercial hobbyist collectors. Great for those of going there on vacation and looking to collect fish for our own tanks

 

[gregmoeck]

the only problem is you will be contributing to a problem. I read yellow tangs used to swim in mass schools around maui but they have been collected too much. I was just there for 2 weeks and only saw on yellow tang and I was in the water every day

 

[philter4]

Gregmoeck, that is actually not true, all of the fish collected in HI are net caught by hand, ( I collect there twice a year and have dove with commorcial collectors in the past) that means that only fish that are shallow enough to be reached by scuba are collected. That means no more than about 10% of the total population is even reachable by collectors and that doesn't mean that they will be caught. Another thing to consider is that the whole NW chain which contains more fish like yellow tangs then the main islands ever did is a preserve and no collection is allowed so there will always be yellow tangs for breeders to repopulate the area.

 

[RGBMatt]

It's unlikely that anybody would be willing to do that - fishermen tend to be pretty secretive and nobody wants to train somebody to be their competitor.

Also, making short trips and selling the fish in Washington doesn't sound like it would be profitable.

The Maui yellow tang "problem" is a load of crap. Oddly enough, Maui has never had much of an aquarium fishery - nearly all of the collectors are on other islands. There's no way that aquarium fishermen can have much effect on Maui, but there are some very misguided environmentalists over there who like to blow things out of proportion. If you didn't see any yellow tangs when you were there, you probably weren't in the right area. They require very specific habitat and aren't normally found in most of the popular snorkelling spots.