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The Kona Coast is known as the Gold Coast
because it's famous for yellow tangs.
25 major reef fish dealers in Honolulu
ship out a million yellow tangs a year.
They refer to Hawaii reef wildlife as livestock.
Their warehouse is huge,
you could drive all the way around and you wouldn't know what it was.
You need two things to be an aquarium collector in Hawaii.
It's a pulse and 50 bucks.
They're coming from all over the place to take our fish.
You know, when you get a handful of people
trying to shut down a four billion dollar industry,
they're going to mount, uh, some response,
and they have done so.
Here we go to Rene Umberger's point of view video,
and this is the attack.
He grabs the regulator, rips it off.
There's the attack again, he rips the regulator
right out of her mouth.
The regulator dangles freely.
If she hadn't found it, she would have drowned.
Or she could've rushed to the surface,
embolized, and died.
Violence shows the aquarium trade's willingness to risk anything for money.
You are listening to Ecotopia on KZFR.
Our guest tonight is Robert Wintner, Snorkel Bob.
He's an activist fighting the loss of tropical fish
and the destruction of the coral reefs.
Every year we open the eyes
of thousands upon thousands more people to what's going on.
These guys can go out and empty any given reef,
and it's legal. That can't be right!
But it's... It's what's happening.
At any given moment,
there are 27 million reef wildlife individuals
in the aquarium pipeline.
The pipeline begins at the point of capture in a net...
and it ends when the fish goes belly up in the home aquarium.
And demand comes from the home hobbyist,
that's how the system works.
It's like cut flowers.
But this is marine wildlife.
The effect on reefs worldwide is devastating.
This is a Hawaii treasure.
This is Hawaii culture.
It's not livestock... and they're stealing it.
The consensus is our reefs are nothing like they used to be.
I've seen species that were available for sale before,
but are no longer available because they are gone, just gone.
Still kind of sad to realize
the fish you own now was actually once living happily
in a massive ocean, and is now living in a box of water.
99% of these critters die within a year of capture,
and they're dying and being replaced.
That's a dark hobby.
The aquarium campaign didn't really begin in a moment.
We identified threats to reef health.
The first was gill nets.
They're also known as walls of death.
They kill monk seals and turtles,
both are endangered species.
On Maui, we recruited a very loved Kapuna there,
Kimokeo Kapahulehua,
and put him in an outrigger canoe, and he's paddling along,
and then we go underwater in a gill net,
and it's trapping a turtle who's dying.
"Tell DAR to stop gill nets now."
And we ran that statewide, it was very effective.
And, uh, that year,
gill nets were banned on the island of Maui.
The rest of Hawaii has regulations that are mostly,
uh, padding and fluff, they're not very effective.
We worked to stop the gill net
for over harvesting what they should not harvest.
We had a system in Hawaiian management,
when to catch, how to catch,
with what you're going to catch it for.
And we went by the season.
We would never harvest everything all at once,
so we do not ever over fish.
The Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled
that this aquarium trade must defer to the Hawaiian culture,
also known as the host culture, you cannot slap it in the face.
Well, obviously it's been slapped in the face
time and time again for the last 200 years.
This is hard to read, I'm going to try.
"Miloli'i, last fishing village in Hawaii Nei."
You know, here you have an industry
where they're not taking,
they're making money out of the tourists
to come on a boat, take them diving.
There would be more... More logic, yeah,
to have the fish stay there
and come to Hawaii and go look at it.
But no take my fish and...
You know, a... And put them in aquarium up in,
in New York City or Tennessee or whatever, you know,
that's not their home.
When I look at my kapunas,
they didn't have science, but they had a common sense.
Yeah? How much you take, when to go,
they know all the moons coming up, they're reading...
I mean, I look at my tutu men, they was great, awes... awesome.
Never worry about fish going deplete.
Kona and Miloli'i is considered the Gold Coast
for collecting aquarium fish.
It is the most pristine coast in the state of Hawaii.
We got this piece of property from my grandfather,
who got it from his grandmother
back in the early days of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
It gave them inspiration and it gave them hope.
Our grandfather would never agree on something like this.
I always stood on the grounds of...
Of being a cultural practitioner.
Our families down here, we live on a system of balance
where we take only what we need to feed our families.
Be careful, everybody reach out together.
I know you guys not paddlers,
but no lean all on one side, everybody.
- Oh! - -Oh, what happened?
I remember my dad going to meetings in Kona.
He realized there are a lot of collectors
that were coming to our island and collecting,
and he didn't agree with that.
He lobbied, worked through the state,
he met the governor to do something about this.
Some of our own native people are hired by them to collect,
and it's... it's not pono, you know, it's not right,
because they knew growing up that they survived off the fish,
and whenever they have said they've brainwashed them,
I feel it's not true.
It's overfishing by these people.
You know, the state did not do a good job to manage them properly.
This... the only industry I know
that can go 365 days a year
and take as much as they want.
That's not right. That's not pono.
Fish are able to sing to one another.
They are able to develop complex social structures.
They develop cultural traditions.
They can even talk to one another underwater.
Most people don't know this kind of thing about fish.
- Jonathan, how are you? - Jonathan Balcombe is a biologist
with a PhD in ethology,
which is the study of animal behavior.
His book is What a Fish Knows:
The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins.
- Jonathan, welcome to Take Two. - Thanks for having me, A.
Alright. So, what are some of the common misconceptions we have about fish?
That they're primitive. They're, in fact, highly evolved,
they've been around for 450 million years,
which is about 450 times as long as we've been around.
It's often thought that animals are just instinctual.
I... I think the best response to that is to show
that they're not, is the flexibility of animal behavior,
the fact that they will behave differently in different settings,
the fact that they may have, uh, may be in a certain state,
they may be hungry or in pain,
and it will change the way they'll behave
in an otherwise the same situation.
The problem with thinking that it's all instinct
is it's sort of a way to diminish the animal
as just a stimulus response machine.
Given that fishes have not just minds
but also emotions, we know they have experiences.
Uh, they can experience pain, they can experience pleasure.
They have wants, needs, desires.
They have feelings, they're individuals.
This is something that scientists
had not really been giving much thought to
because we've had such a dim view of these creatures.
One of the challenges of any aspect of studying the inner life,
the conscious world of another species,
is they're not just going to tell you how they're feeling,
so we kind of have to be creative
and observant and surmise.
People who live near a reef,
who get in the water on a regular basis, will tell you
they can see a fish and then see them again and then see them again,
and the same thing happens
as if you see the same person at the mall.
Uh, recognition, familiarity, friendship.
And I was out there once with my dive buddy,
and I did a double take to my side
because there was somebody who was coming up. And I looked,
and it was a yellow-margin moray, you know.
Got a picture. He was schooling up with us.
We saw him several more times.
I nicknamed him Kukla.
He was a little long in the tooth,
didn't have all his teeth.
And I estimate Kukla at about 27, 28 years old.
Just the easiest going guy.
I could be swimming along and Kukla would come out,
and every time I'd come up for another close up,
and he, he likes it, he gives me poses.
He's... he's just a wonderful friend.
Many fish, such as butterflyfish,
live on a coral patch that is, you know,
more or less the size of a room.
A male and a female will bond.
They maintain the coral,
they actually go around together and work together
to just pick off the algae that's growing on the coral,
and then they eat the little coral polyps and,
you know, that's their home.
And they will mate for life.
The natural lifespan of fish can be years or even decades.
But unfortunately, the sad fact is that in captivity,
some fish live only a few days or a few weeks.
Your initial question was what's the condition of reefs worldwide?
And there's so many layers and so many connections
that it's hard to tell where one stops and the next starts.
In Third World countries, the trade makes a case
that they're providing livelihood for people
who wouldn't be able to make money in any other way.
In a world famous reef area
known for ornate, intricate little critters,
they still use cyanide.
Cyanide is highly toxic.
This is a chemical that stops oxygen
from being able to reach the brain.
They swim down with an ounce vial of cyanide,
open the vial, and it'll stun the fish.
They can't tell if they're dead or not, they put them all in a bucket.
The ones that come to,
get shipped out for the aquarium trade.
The ones that don't come to, go back over.
We estimate that probably 90%,
and that's a lot, 90% of the wild caught fish
that are imported to the US
were caught with cyanide.
Cyanide is killing the animals,
also killing the reef.
So then, that's home, that's where they procreate,
that's where they feed.
So, once you've killed the coral,
you've killed the entire ecosystem
that depends on the coral.
They use dynamite to the same effect.
-They'll drop a blasting cap on a reef...
it'll explode, obviously it blows up the reef.
It kills many fish.
Uh, many fish don't die, they're just stunned.
What are the long term effects of this?
-As violent as dynamite is...
cyanide is worse.
Cyanide, if it doesn't kill, causes liver function compromise
in both person or fish.
Most collectors in those areas
that use cyanide have yellow eyes,
they're jaundiced.
How bad is the state of Hawaii?
As a steward,
Hawaii does not allow cyanide or dynamite.
The aquarium collectors,
they use what are called tickle sticks.
In our swimming out there, we started seeing aquarium collectors,
we thought, "What's wrong with this picture?"
You know, seeing how they do their job.
They'd come into the finger coral,
it is primary habitat for several species,
including the yellow tang.
They use a billy club or a stick,
and they tap it or smash it,
herding all the fish into a big net.
So I took some pictures of it.
Paul risked his life
to go out and take pictures
of the people who are destroying our reefs
and collecting aquarium fish.
I wasn't bashful, I would wait
for the aquarium poachers to come up and say,
"Hey, I had a camera and I... I think you might be breaking the law."
I just kept doing that, and some of the collectors
quit coming into the bay, some didn't.
Then, they reach into that net
and grasp the fish by hand.
That's traumatic.
On real exotic fish from greater depths,
they take a hypodermic syringe.
Instead of raising them slowly to the surface,
they bring them up quickly, because they're anxious
to get the fish to market before they die.
And they use a needle
to puncture the animals' swim bladder.
Getting rid of the air inside them.
And I don't need to tell you but I will, it's traumatic.
Once they get the fish up to the boat,
they may... there may be spines on the fish,
and they will actually trim those spines using,
you know, scissors and this sort of thing,
which really is like cutting off someone's finger.
And why do they do that? Because they're sharp,
and they want to put them in a plastic bag,
and if it puncture that plastic bag
with its dorsal spikes,
he dies and they don't get their money.
And then what? Out in the open air,
it can't breathe.
Fish need to be in water in order to breathe.
Can you imagine the level of stress?
Then they put the fish in the cooler, trauma,
for the bumpy ride, trauma, back to the dock,
then into a truck, trauma.
They ship the fish in a small bag of water,
and if the fish goes shee-shee or number two,
it fouls the water,
and a much greater chance of the fish dying.
If they starve them, then it's less chance of that happening.
You can actually see these yellow tangs shipping out,
and their ribs are sticking out.
The campaign to ban the aquarium trade
succeeded when the 2010 Maui County Council
banned animal cruelty.
The collectors and dealers left Maui for Kona
for a life of unencumbered reef exploitation.
When I was younger, what I did have was two fish.
And, um, I had one fish initially who we called "Fish,"
and another fish who we called "Chips."
In our case, we didn't know
the types of water treatment that the fish required,
didn't know, um, that overfeeding them can kill them,
didn't know that different toxins can kill them.
And so, like a lot of people, we were vastly underprepared,
and so the fish ultimately died
as a result of, um, our lack of basic understanding
of what fish need to survive.
I was always into fish when I was a kid.
Started off with, uh, just a fish bowl
that I was breeding guppies in,
and then I moved up to a bigger tank.
I've worked in private, like, aquarium maintenance companies.
I've seen accidents from general negligence.
Every fish in the entire system was dead.
Well, that was easily 100, 150 fish.
You get people that have tanks on a big, huge wall that,
you know, they want it to be pretty, they want the live reefs,
and they want certain colors as opposed to even a species.
They just say, "Well, I want a blue and a red
and an orange fish."
Never mind those fish wouldn't actually be found
anywhere near each other on a reef.
And they're probably going to end up killing each other,
hurting each other, or not being able to live in that community.
And they just... end up dying,
and they buy more.
We've been keeping fishes in tanks for a long time.
And it presents some quandaries.
On the one hand, it's a great way
to look at them up close
and see the beauty of them, see how they move around.
You can see aspects of their behavior
and learn things from them by watching them in captivity.
But there is that side of it, the captivity aspect.
The fact is you are taking away
perhaps their most precious possession,
which is their freedom.
A recent PETA investigation of a national pet store chain
uncovered egregious cruelty to animals.
We found that dozens of fish per day were dead on arrival.
I think pet stores see fish and other animals
as mere commodities who they mass produce
in order to sell and turn a profit.
Any time you receive an order of fish
while working at a fish store, pet store,
it's not uncommon at all
for there to be dead fish in that shipment.
So, they skim the surf on Waikiki Beach.
Our cameraman is running alongside in a canoe.
In Hawaii, the moon hangs so low that lovers lean against it.
Aquarium collection began in Hawaii
when the jets could start coming, and it was like 1970.
So collection started early
and mostly on Oahu.
There was already people feeling, a long time ago,
"This might not be okay," sort of from an ethical-moral foundation,
not... no science data on how much,
what would be sustainable harvest or anything.
And many people over the years
have been asking the state to do that environmental review,
in addition to phasing out or ending the industry.
They've never basically assessed,
"Is there an effect on the reef?
Is there an effect on the fish populations?"
At that point, people who were thinking,
"We need to look into this," sued the state.
So the environmental review part
ended up being litigated in court.
Okay.
Alrighty.
My name was given from my dad
after one of his favorite grandfathers,
who was named Kaimi.
And it's a family name and the name means "seeker."
I'm a fifth generation native Hawaiian.
I've been a plaintiff with my dad
in regards to, uh, lawsuit.
Families and different organizations are suing
the Department of Land and Natural Resources
to stop, um,
aquarium fish collection in the state of Hawaii.
I was asked to do some research for a lawsuit.
One, is it possible that the f... these fish
are important to the coral reef?
And two, that they've been diminished
by removing aquarium fish?
And it took many, many years, you know,
went all the way up through the court.
It was easy to show that it's highly likely that it could impact the reef.
There was also a subtle side message, it's kind of scary
but I think really important. We make this assumption,
as people and scientists,
that because organisms reproduce,
if their numbers get really low, we can bring them back.
If we stop doing whatever we're doing, they will come back.
But that doesn't always turn out to be the case,
because if we let this go too far,
it's possible that they will not come back.
This is Mind Over Matters on KEXP Seattle 90.3 FM.
My guest this morning is Robert Wintner.
What is the importance of ocean reefs?
It's one of the great mysteries and treasures of planet Earth.
90% of all creatures in the ocean
spend their infancy on a reef,
where they have plenty of cover.
Reefs are in peril all over the world.
We have seen reefs in French Polynesia vanish in 15 months,
turned to rubble and sand.
There's balance between habitat and species,
and to pull the fish,
these beautiful, bright colored fish off the reefs
by the millions for an amusement industry
is obscene, immoral, and should stop.
It should be illegal, and that's what we're in the process of seeking.
Pono is who you're with. Are you with God?
Are you with the ocean? Yeah?
You make pono.
We get a... we get fish gods out there checking you out.
So you don't go out there and hana 'ino,
you know, make wrong.
Malama.
That's the key, take care.
Whilst, to some extent, humans, as the caretakers of the planet
and the planet's most intrepid travelers and explorers,
uh, we have an interest in saving the seas for our own benefit.
I think it's much more important,
uh, for the millions of species whose lives
and existence very much depend on it.
To humans, it's the sea,
but to marine life, it's where they live.
Coral reefs are like rainforest,
because they have high abundance of life
and high biodiversity.
Are the fish important to the reef?
Surely, and the reef is important to the fish.
71% of the earth is presently covered with ocean.
Carbon dioxide is absorbed by algae
that live inside the coral.
When they make sugar, they also produce oxygen.
And since the ocean is so vast,
they're creating the huge percentage of the oxygen.
A lot of the fish that are collected for the aquarium trade
eat those algae.
We can think of them as lawn mowers.
They're like little salad eaters all day long.
By eating algae, the fish prevent it
from growing all over the coral and blocking the sunlight.
If the fish aren't there,
then the coral will die.
This leads to a loss of biodiversity,
and new coral cannot settle.
So we basically have lost the coral reef ecosystem.
One of the greatest problems faced by coral reef fish
is that the corals are becoming increasingly stressed.
These problems don't exist independently
in their own vacuum, they're additive.
If we have coral bleaching and we have over collection for the aquarium trade,
and they are working to create havoc,
that is extremely problematic.
Coral is also valued by humans.
Adventurers risk their lives diving to great depths
for coral off the shores of Maui.
Maui is one of the few places in the world
where black coral is found,
and it comes glistening up from the depths
like a gnarled freak miniature tree.
But so firmly rooted is it that it has to be hacked
from the seabed, sometimes with a sword.
This is death, yet paradoxically, it resembles living beauty,
for soon it will be made into delicate jewelry
for discerning women the world over.
So when you see coral jewelry, think,
"Where did that come from?"
The coral that is used in jewelry
is principally deep water coral.
And it is in nature even extremely rare.
And people value it because of that rarity.
The reefs are challenged.
This very valuable place, the coral reef,
is valuable for its food fish,
for its beauty, protection from storms,
its spiritual value, for its ecotourism value.
The reef is part of the reason people come here.
Reef based tourism generates
800 million dollars a year in Hawaii.
We have, um, protected bay...
Hanauma Bay.
It shows that sharp contrast
between what happens when you protect an area
and when you let full scale extraction occur.
Aquarium fish removal is a form of exploitation.
I see tourists come and they go in the water,
and if I'm in the places that I swim that I know are degraded reefs,
it makes me sad because I feel like they're not going to get to see
what really they were imagining.
In my limited scientific knowledge,
I always figured that the bigger the fish, the bigger the brain,
which means a fish like, say, a shark, that's why they're so amazing,
they hunt in packs, they know exactly what they're doing.
So a fish, like, say, a minnow, it has intellectual depth?
Sure. Take the frillfin goby,
they live in the intertidal zones, so they...
They can hop around between tide pools at low tide.
They memorize the topography
of this tide pool zone at high tide,
so they can translate that aerial view at high tide
into a horizontal view at low tide.
It's what's called mental mapping.
And they can remember it 40 days later.
And it's a very small fish with probably
quite a small brain.
They have not just biology but they have biographies.
They're unique, each one.
The more I've learned about fish,
the more I've learned just how really amazing they are.
The cognitive abilities of fish in many ways match or exceed
those of so called higher order vertebrates,
even some non-human primates.
There's individual personalities.
I've seen fish that will let you
pet them like a dog and feed them by hand,
and everything that they're doing
and every behavior they're exhibiting
would make you think that they're loving you
and bonding with you like a dog would.
In Hawaii, we've had campaigns
in the three areas of government,
executive, legislative and judicial,
and in every, uh, segment of the campaign,
the aquarium trade want to shout us down,
and they say, "It's not true, it's not true.
This is not devastating."
And so I refer to this crowd
as the torch and pitchfork crowd.
We see the aquarium trade, pardon me, as bad guys,
and... and we want to stop them.
No more starvation, no more fin cutting.
No more hypodermic puncture is allowed.
And the president of the Kona Aquarium Association
in a public hearing said,
"Snorkel Bob," that's me,
"is an ecoterrorist." And when I saw that, I laughed,
because I have sent some incendiary emails.
But ecoterrorist seems a bit of a stretch.
Bill 318 asks the basic business questions.
Who owns the reef wildlife on Big Island reefs?
Is it really inventory? Is that inventory unlimited?
The Snorkel Bob Foundation cannot campaign politically in an election.
We also can't be involved in any political lobbying.
When I lobby, most of the time, I lobby as an individual.
The aquarium trade has no data
on environmental impact or Hawaiian cultural impact.
For these reasons and many more, this county council
urged the governor and legislature last year...
- I'll have to ask you... -...to ban the aquarium trade statewide.
I trust this council will be consistent in its values
and economic assessment, passing Bill 318.
- Sorry for the overtime. - Okay, thank you.
This is a contact sport.
Uh, we think we're making headway.
There is no greater gratification in the world
than a win. We think we have some significant wins
right now, uh, within reach.
And so, we're going at it every way we can.
The Cuba trip was a real eye opener.
I'd seen footage on Jardines de la Reina,
the gardens of the Queen,
and it just looked remarkable.
It's about 1,000 acres...
70 miles south of the Cuban coast.
Say what you will about Fidel Castro,
one day he said, "Stop taking sharks."
When I was there, I said, "How can you take your sharks?
You're so far from Asia. That's who wants sharks."
The fella who ran the resort said,
"Well, sharks were our protein staple.
We ate them all."
Jardines de la Reina was gang raped and left for dead.
It was a dead zone.
Within two or three years, and the ocean is resilient,
this is what gives us hope,
every reef should have the capacity
to support about 20 sharks.
In a very short time, the sharks came back to Jardines.
That first dive,
we went out to the site...
and our dive leader, Miguel, said, "Okay,
this is a very special spot,
not too many sharks."
We're water dogs, we know the drill.
And we saw a dorsal fin... Here's the surface, dorsal fin.
The obvious first glance is sharks everywhere.
Miguel says, "It's okay. Do not hesitate.
Get in, go down." It was like...
and we go, "Came that far."
And we roll back and... and went down.
You descend into a garden
that is so abundant, so diverse.
You forget about the sharks until they start circling you.
They follow you, it's like your... your house animals.
An... and I would say, by day three,
the sharks would come by and they'd just, you know,
knock a strobe arm or bump us with a dorsal.
That's a check, that's what sharks do,
they want to see if you're still alive
or if you are risk free.
100% host of apex predators.
100% coral cover.
And optimal biodiversity, as Neptune intended.
Cuba is now in the lead position
on reef rejuvenation in the world.
No place else on earth has this.
Unfortunately...
they're taking their sharks again.
China is a close affiliate with Cuba
and they're demanding sharks,
and Cuba is now taking sharks again.
This is a nonstop campaign.
Jardines de la Reina and all the pure reefs of Cuba
have one flaw,
lionfish.
They've come that far south.
Lionfish are a perfect microcosm.
Uh, the before and the after that can happen
when you take nature past the tipping point.
They're so voracious,
they're very difficult to keep in an aquarium,
and anything else that's in that aquarium,
the lionfish will gobble up.
And they get pretty big, they can get up to,
you know, 12, 14 inches.
And because the pet owner doesn't have the heart
to kill them, they're released.
Where lionfish are natural,
the predators keep them in balance.
The lionfish did not swim to the Atlantic...
they didn't go there voluntarily.
It all comes down to the greater subject
of wildlife trafficking for the pet trade.
A lionfish will eat all the fry of the other species.
And lionfish spread all over the South Atlantic seaboard.
Lionfish outnumber all other species
in the Atlantic and Caribbean,
they've shown remarkable adaptation
to depth and temperature range.
It is the biggest marine catastrophe in the modern era.
What we've seen is reaction among humans,
where they have now lionfish rodeos.
And it's a way to vent their frustration
on a scapegoat species,
the evil lionfish.
And they go out, and they spear lionfish,
and they weigh them, and they, "Ha, ha!
We're getting the nasty little bastards."
As if that's a solution. It's not.
Trafficking for the pet trade,
it's bad for the source, uh, habitat,
it's bad for the destination habitat.
The lionfish are not at fault here.
Home hobbyists released them
because they didn't want to flush them.
We are very conscious of a lot of the land animals
that are endangered in Hawaii,
and what we see happening on land
is happening underwater as well,
and may be much worse.
When it comes to what's under the water,
we have allowed that for 50 years.
It's not seeing, right? Every day you're not looking into the forest
and seeing the birds.
You have to actually get in the water
to see what's going on.
Humans don't pay that much attention
to what happens underwater.
Fish don't scream out loud the way that mammals do.
We have a very dynamic, core group,
uh, reef community people here in Hawaii
who are dedicated from the heart
because they... they hate what they see happening.
Uh, and they want this to stop.
The thing that turtles have going for them
is everybody loves the turtles.
People relate to turtles.
I relate to fish, sometimes I can't understand
why more people don't relate to fish the way I do.
I think they're so cute.
In Hawaii, turtles are still legally, federally protected.
Every species of coral in Hawaii
is protected by state regulation.
It is kapu,
you cannot take one piece of substrate
from the ocean floor.
For the reef species,
zero protection, zero.
There was just a... a story about people trying to sell green sand
from Hawaii on eBay, and it had to be removed,
you cannot sell sand, you cannot sell rocks,
live rock from the water, you can't sell coral.
So, there's basically only one type of organism
that can come off this reef for sale with no limits,
and that's the small, juvenile, beautiful aquarium fish.
Fishes have been literally and figuratively
below the surface of our thinking and our consciousness.
They live in another realm. We've been alienated from them,
and I think why we're emerging from this now, finally,
is that we have the technologies, we have scuba gear,
we have underwater photography, and you can watch YouTube videos
of fishes doing stuff that would've been thought fantasy just a generation ago.
So, because they're not like us,
we don't think that they're anywhere near us.
That's right, I think the less human like
a species is, we're going to be less able to relate.
So what's the science, then, behind this idea
that fish are more than just mindless,
uh, swimming/feeding machines?
It's a science that really surprised me,
it was like, "Wow!" They... they have thoughts,
they plan, they use tools,
they... they play, they fall for optical illusions.
They have sex lives, they have interesting social lives.
So it's really quite an explosion of information
that we now have coming out about fishes.
They are already a lot more interesting than my daily life, actually,
all the things you just mentioned, that's...
That's more than I do in a single day.
So, give us some examples.
These little species of fish called cleaner wrasses,
they're small, maybe two, three inches long.
They're attractive, they advertise they're open for business.
And business is to remove parasites
from so called client fishes.
More than 100 species will line up to wait their turn
on the reef to be serviced.
The cleaner fishes will pluck off sea lice
and other parasites from their skin.
The cleaners, of course, get food from doing this,
and they will clean hundreds a day.
And the clients get a spa treatment
- and a parasite removal service.
The... the favorite food of cleaners is actually the mucus layer,
they'll nip off a little moat of that mucus,
and it causes usually the client to jolt.
Other clients are watching these interactions,
and they're forming long term accounts
of the quality of service that these cleaners do.
So cleaners will do a better job
if there's more clients in the queue,
their eBay ratings are more at stake.
They will do, uh, caresses,
they will rapidly flutter their pectoral fins
against the bodies of their clients.
The Big Island has come up with a pseudo solution
to try and deal with the issue of aquarium collecting.
And, uh, over the course of ten years of negotiations,
this group of people came up with a compromise.
Uh, Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources
came out with a White List.
A White List as... a Black List is what you can't do,
it's the species you can't take.
A White List is species that are approved for removal.
Well, it turns out that the species on the list
represent, I don't know, 99% of what the trade already takes.
Uh, so the department spent a lot of time and money,
uh, developing a list of species
the aquarium trade can take.
So this... this White List that is supposed to, uh,
you know, be this new protective rule, it is... is bogus, it's a sham.
The Director of Natural Resources sat down
with a group of aquarium collectors,
and they compiled all the species they needed
to maintain 99% of their revenue stream.
The Abercrombie administration,
they signed the White List.
Bottom line is, it's not enforceable.
So who knows what's really going to be leaving our reefs.
Those 40 species will still be taken in unlimited numbers,
so we're still in trouble.
Among the interviews I did, the guy said,
"Do fish have souls?"
I said, "Let me rephrase the question.
Is this fish a friend of mine? Yes!"
Anita and I went to Tahiti.
We found a... A longhorn cowfish...
that we nicknamed Cowboy.
We were so excited when we saw him,
they're named for their longhorns,
he has a beautiful fantail. He was extraordinary.
He was in shallow water, eight to ten feet,
and we visited him probably two or three times a day.
On each visit, he just became more engaging.
Uh, and again, it's an example of,
uh, familiarity and friendship.
Okay, now, I promise this will be my last fish story.
It's a turtle story.
We were over at Red Hill, Pu'u Ola'i.
The current was coming up,
and coming head on was,
uh, a Hawaiian green sea turtle, or honu.
And I started to veer one way, and she veered the same way.
I veered the opposite, she veered the opposite.
And I thought, "Is this a game of chicken?"
She's a big gal, she was in the 350, 400 pound range.
And we were coming head on.
We got almost to the point of contact,
and I sucked it up and twisted this way,
she twisted that way, and we passed.
I dropped down only, like, eight, ten feet to the bottom,
uh, to get a shot of another fish there.
And I felt this...
on my back, on my tank.
And I was pretty sure who it was.
And I rolled over...
and there she was.
I'm pretty sure she wanted to mate.
And I don't say that... I mean, of course I'm facetious,
but, uh, you know, there are natural attractions here,
I had the hard shell, the wrinkly neck.
And it was... she just looked at me so longingly, and I got the shot.
And it really captures her essence and her love,
regardless of her motives. And I love her right back.
And I said, "It's fun to speculate on the, uh, the offspring,
you know, such wit, such verve, such flippers."
Everybody making money on this,
everybody walking all over these reefs to collect fish...
these are people who would convert nature to money.
We actually had a bill last year that passed the Legislature
to end the commercial capture
of wildlife for aquarium purposes.
Welcome, Robert Wintner.
We last had him on this show in February,
when he told us about Hawaii's Bill SB1240.
We've urged listeners to phone or email legislators
and the Governor urging the passage of this bill.
It's been no walk in the basil, believe me.
And we've been at this for 11 years.
When SB1240 started to gain traction,
we started to really fight our way
through the House and the Senate.
We experienced a growing groundswell of support,
and now this is huge.
SB1240 will stop state issued aquarium permits.
The current collectors will be grandfathered in.
And it was actually a great solution,
because it didn't negatively impact
the current commercial collectors
who might feed their families.
I just want to clarify.
Something will happen this week, right?
I have to tell you, I feel good.
There has been much conversation about Senate Bill 1240
relating to aquatic life.
Uh, in the final analysis,
I did decide to, uh, veto that measure.
The Department of Land and Natural Resources opposed the bill.
The agency claimed that the removal
of over a million animals a year has no effect.
It wasn't the perfect solution from a conservation perspective,
but it was pretty darn close, and it was a good compromise.
We passed committee conference,
and the guts of the bill were intact,
and everybody celebrated.
SB1240 said, "On this issue,
our beautiful reefs, there is hope.
We're going to make a giant step forward."
We had support from all over Hawaii and America.
We had nonprofit groups jump on board,
hundreds of thousands of supporters,
and he vetoed the bill.
We'll see what happens moving forward.
The hope is that this year there might be another bill
that can actually end the industry.
A lot of the collectors, uh, really do care for the resource.
They're not the enemy,
and they know that the resource itself is depleted.
And yet, from their perspectives,
their livelihood depends on collecting.
We do recognize there'll be some need for change,
and there are times when, like this case,
it would mean that people are out of work
and people who love their jobs.
They're all excellent divers.
There's a couple options. One, which means they don't collect fish anymore,
is some sort of buyout, you know, at least they'll be economically sound,
because they... they do make those arguments.
This is a pretty big fishery, so it'd cost some money.
If you want to make big money, there's commercial diving, tech diving.
Try to figure out ways to incentivize them
having new careers with scholarships.
I mean, these guys know the ocean.
Let's have them become marine biologists
or marine research scientists, or the one that I favor,
is learn how to aquaculture these fish.
Today, the vast majority of freshwater fish are aquacultured.
There have been a number of saltwater marine fish
that are popular in the aquarium trade,
the clown fish are aquacultured.
Let's make sure when we're aquaculturing organisms
that they're raised, you know, with respect.
I have noticed a change
in some of the smaller f... Smaller shops
that are kind of moving more towards sustainability.
More and more species that I had seen in the trade were coming up captive bred,
and a lot of stores were using that as kind of a selling point.
So it... it's just becoming more and more commonplace.
So I figured, if they're doing it with some species,
they can do it with the other species.
And if they can't figure out how to do it,
then we shouldn't have them in an aquarium.
I don't think that it's in the benefit
of the individual members of the species
to breed them in captivity,
to keep them in barren tanks indefinitely,
where their breeding schedules and their feeding schedules
are wholly artificially reliant on humans,
where they will live their lives in captivity.
I don't think that's an existence
that we necessarily want to encourage.
These are thinking, feeling beings,
and we have a responsibility to make sure
that their lives are lives that are worth living.
You are taking away perhaps their most precious possession,
which is their freedom.
There's actually some places in the world
where they passed laws making it illegal
to keep a fish in a little bowl.
So it's been recognized legislatively, based on science,
that this is not a good quality of life.
Keeping fish in glass tanks
says that humans are the privileged observers
and manipulators of the wildlife,
and fish are the framed objects
who exist for human gratification.
So, rather than increase public interest
in wildlife conservation,
aquariums embody the human, uh, acquisitiveness
that has led to so much habitat destruction and species,
uh, extinction over the years.
It's sort of the forever argument for or against zoos or aquaria,
is that there are, yes, some animals in captivity there,
and we... we may say that's not the optimal life for them,
but because we're such a powerful species,
you know, because we dominate, we really need to manage.
If we can get people connected to nature,
you know, just foster in them an ecological ethic.
We have never had any of our fish
displayed in any aquarium.
It was left where it belongs.
I got two amazing, beautiful clownfish.
If they're dead, I will cry.
Oh, my God, they're perfect.
My favorite way to go with, uh, saltwater is captive bred.
I know it can't always be done, sadly.
Most fish are wild caught.
"Now, what's wrong with that?" I mean, that's not sustainable.
It's almost like there's this unspoken acceptance
that you're going to lose animals.
Blue tangs get one foot long.
So, if you imagine a foot swimming around,
it's a big fish, it cannot live in a ten gallon tank,
it cannot live in a 20 gallon tank,
it can't live in any of those tanks.
We have a lot of rules about cruelty towards our dogs, our cats.
And what do we have in place for these animals?
You know, there's not enough value placed on their lives.
When you remove a fish from the reef,
there is a hole there for a while where there used to be
a fish that hung out or that knew that area.
So we... we're doing something really weird,
we're objectifying them, yeah,
like they're infinitely replaceable,
and that they're just some sort of object.
We're not seeing them as part of this neighborhood.
It's not a product, you know,
it is an organism that has interactions,
you know, we could even say a family,
it has descendants out there.
If we can get 25% of home hobbyists to think,
I had no idea the damage this was causing.
How these fish are caught.
The... the destruction to habitat in the process,
the consequence to herbivores not eating algae,
they would take up photography or get a flat screen TV.
You can have a... an underwater experience from your laptop.
We have reef cams now.
They're down there night and day,
and you don't have to kill anything,
you don't have to compromise habitat.
The reef cam gives you the live action.
The technology serves a great purpose
and is really exciting for what it will allow.
Augmented reality that can put the user into the ocean.
Children and future generations,
they'll be able to improve the lives of animals
that doesn't keep them in captivity.
So there were advocates who went forward,
they actually lost at the lower and intermediate level,
but at the Hawaii Supreme Court level, they won.
The Supreme Court ruled in our favor
after battling five years.
The state agency in charge
of protecting our public resources
has to stop allowing commercial collection
until they go through the environmental review process.
The state is not giving any new permits,
there's about 231 active permits,
the majority of the permits are in this coast of Kona.
They didn't stop the current commercial license.
It's illegal, but they have to enforce it.
We're all connected to the canoe
because our ancestors came from the south islands
or the Polynesian island called Tahiti
or Marquesas, by canoe.
We're very, very connected to the canoe
and connected to ocean because of that reason.
I made this trip all the way up the National Monument
of Papahanaumokuakea.
From Hawaii to Kure, it's almost 1,600 miles.
We paddled day, night, day, night.
Papahanaumokuakea goes about 1,200 miles to the northwest
of the northernmost part of the Hawaiian Islands.
It's huge.
I was driving on this road
right about here in 2007.
We got a call and said, "It's a monument."
It was the northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
If you think Papahanaumokuakea is hard.
Papahanaumokuakea.
It's a shining light in marine protection.
I sit on something called the Reserve Advisory Council.
We've got Hawaiians, Hawaiian elders,
citizens at large, conservation, uh, experts,
scientists, I'm the education rep.
And there is no extraction.
We really have a preserved environment.
The biodiversity up there is amazing.
The top predators are the most abundant.
They've found an incredibly high number
of endemic species, which is a huge deal for scientists.
And we can apply what we've learned
to the main Hawaiian islands,
which are fairly devastated.
Since it's so well protected and so remote,
it's probably one of the most healthy, pristine, intact ecosystems.
It's a very important spiritual place to the Hawaiians.
One of the lower islands, Mokumanamana,
sits at 23.5 degrees latitude,
which is right on the Tropic of Cancer.
Very interesting archaeological sites.
We think it was like Stonehenge.
On the equinox, in Hawaiian culture,
that is the jumping off place of souls,
that's a very special place north of that, they knew that.
If we can tie our heart to the value of nature,
for Western people it'd be sort of the sense of the sacred.
Let's not look at that fish as money.
You know, some people may look at it as a friend, we may look at it as kin.
We may look at it as a being that has its own value,
you know, however that was given to it,
just by the fact we share the planet with it.
The chant talks about asking permission.
It reflects upon the po'e ka lani, the people of heaven,
the po'e ka moana, the people of the ocean,
and the po'e ka o 'aina, the people of the land.
They say to all of us,
"I give you my heaven, my ocean and my land.
You care for it as I have done."
I know of a lot of culture that's extinct now.
It's really important that the people of all Hawaii
preserve the Hawaiian culture.
We can embrace the world of who we are, what we are,
what we have done and where we're going.
Live in my culture, teaching every day,
will keep my culture and legacy.
The main Hawaiian islands could be a national monument
like Papahanaumokuakea.
And working together with all the agencies of NOA
and the State and the community.
We will definitely gain a better life
for the marine species.
We need to protect all these resources.
God put all of fish in the ocean.
Before, when I was small, they was all over.
No sense come to the ocean, there's no fish.
This industry that they allowed...
they need to put a stop to, that's all I'm thinking.
The Supreme Court says it's illegal.
We need the Department of Land and Natural Resources
to implement,
and the State, they don't really enforce well.
The reefs are dying
because of us as humans not doing what is right.
Hawaiian people, they knew how to maintain balance.
The representatives are supposed to represent
the interests of the people, not the other way around.
When they take from us,
they're taking from our children's future.
And I'm calling on the Hawaiian people
to get behind this also.
My bill for prohibiting, uh, reef fish aquarium collecting,
it's going to be a fight.
The aquarium trade hired big gun lobbying firms.
Our reefs are our public trust.
The fish in the ocean are our public trust.
It's time for this to stop.
And I think we have a very good chance.
We speak for the fish.
And believe me, the fish are talking.