Patterns of Change in Hawai‘i’s Small-Boat Commercial Handline Fisheries COMING IN NOVEMBER! PFRP PI Workshop

Introduction This article summarizes key findings from two recently completed Pelagic Fisheries Research Program (PFRP) projects, each designed to examine change in Hawai‘i’s small-boat commercial handline fisheries. The first study focused on factors associated with diminished activity in the ika-shibi fishery, a long-standing and once-lucrative yellowfin and bigeye tuna fishery specific to Hawai‘i Island. The second study focused on small-boat tuna operations at Cross Seamount and at private fish-aggregating devices (PFADs) around the islands. (Please see figure 2 of the accompanying Drazen and De Forest/“The Influence of Hawaiian Seamounts...” article for map showing Cross Seamount and localities on Hawai‘i Island.) The majority of project fieldwork was completed between 2005 and 2007 by Janna Shackeroff, who was then finishing her doctoral work at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and by Courtney Carothers, who was then finishing her doctoral work at the University of Washington, Department of Anthropology.