Monday, January 31, 2011

Kahekili report for Jan. 30th by John & Karen

Sunday, January 30th, was a beautiful day at Kahekili in terms of conditions.  Lots of whales, too!  I ran into 4 spearfishermen.  I spoke to 1 spearfisherman when he was walking down to the sandy area, he was carrying 3 spears but when I asked him what he was going to fish for, he said he wasn't going to fish.  I asked him if he knew about the management area and herbivores being protected, he didn't know but didn't seem to particularly care, either.  He was a bit on the hostile side.  My second encounter was right after I got into the water, and this guy also didn't know about the management area or the herbivores being protected, but he was friendlly and receptive. 
I swam down to the Mahana, where I ran into 2 more spearfishermen.  I'm pretty sure they were 2 of the guys John and I spoke to a couple of days ago when they were with a threesome and 2 of them had brown tangs.  This time one of them had a convict tang and another fish that I couldn't see, and the older guy had a black bag that obviously had something in it but I couldn't tell what it was and he wasn't about to tell me.  They both said they didn't know about the management area or the herbivores being protected, I pointed out that we spoke to them the day before yet they still had a convict tang on their string, at which point they just ignored me.  I told them that taking manini is against the law in the management area, but they ignored me and pretended that I wasn't there.  They were in the exact same area that they were in 2 days ago, I'm sure we'll see them there again.

1 comment:

Don McLeish said...

I wonder how much some of these folks who are harvesting from the reef care about its future potential, as a harvest site?

It seems some people base their justification on the past and care only for the present; no thought given to the future.