Ocean
Watch
Monday, October 4, 1999
Ocean life: Don’t abuse it,
or we’ll all lose it
WHEN I was studying marine biology at the University of
Hawaii, I wished there were more articles in the newspapers about the
ocean and its inhabitants. Each day, I looked for marine stories, hoping
to find something, anything, that told me details about Hawaii's marine
creatures.
I was learning the scientific side of the subjects in
school but I wanted to know the fun stuff. When and where could you see
these things? How do the creatures behave around people? I wished that one
day I could write the kind of column I longed to read.
Star-Bulletin editors granted that wish and for the
last 12 years, I have been happily sharing my knowledge and experiences
with others who want to know. This column will end soon but my love for
Hawaii's marine animals will never end. Here's what I wish for now:
I wish people would stop killing animals for pleasure.
Everywhere I go, someone is spearing, hooking, netting
or collecting some hapless marine creature. I am disgusted with people at
the beach who are amused when their dogs dig up and kill ghost crabs. I'm
sickened when people pull tilapia from the Ala Wai Boat Harbor and leave
the fish suffocating on the sidewalk. My heart aches when I see people,
for entertainment, crush sea urchins, spear moray eels and stomp on
periwinkles.
AND then there's shell collecting. I once came across a
man busily working among the rocks near the Hilo breakwater. Peeking into
his bucket, I saw about 30 cowry snails. There was no water in the bucket;
the snails were clearly dying. "What are you going to do with
these?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said sullenly.
"Then why kill them?"
He looked at me defiantly. "Because I want
too."
Another sour moment occurred during a conversation I
had with a physician friend who caught a big marlin. "Oh, it fought
hard," he said, gleefully. "It took hours but we finally got it
aboard."
"And then?"
"We killed it."
"What did you do with it?"
"I don't eat fish. I gave it to the captain."
OK, I know a killer instinct lurks in the psyche of
members of our species. We are here, after all, only because we learned to
be efficient hunters and gatherers.
But most of us don't have to kill and collect animals
to live anymore. If more members of our species would rein in that hunting
and gathering impulse we might evolve to a higher level -- become
preservers rather than destroyers.
In the same vein, I wish our state and city governments
would get the gumption to create more underwater parks. I know all the
arguments against doing it: I fished there all my life; it's a free
country; it hurts residents for the benefit of the tourists, etcetera.
It's time to rise above this rhetoric. There's a stack
of scientific papers showing that protecting parts of the shoreline
increases fish and invertebrate populations in adjacent areas. It could be
a win-win situation for everyone concerned.
"Take, take, take," a local fisherman once
shouted at a public meeting. "That's all we ever do. It's time to
give back."
He's right. I wish our local governments would ban all
gill nets in Hawaii, improve education at Hanauma Bay and stop all fishing
at Shark's Cove, Waikiki and Kahe Point.
My final wish is that I continue hearing from you.
Please don't stop e-mailing me those great stories about your favorite
golden plover, that weird thing you found washed up on the beach or your
painful experience with a jellyfish sting. It's Susan Scott, honu@aloha.net.
I promise I'll write back.
