By ERIN MILLER
Stephens Media
A federal judge has yet to rule on arguments made by Food and Water Watch against the National Marine Fisheries Service’s decision to award a permit to Kampachi Farms for a floating aquaculture project.
But the service agreed to revoke the permit, now held by Kampachi Farms, as of Wednesday, Food and Water Watch’s Hawaii Fisheries Analyst Suzanne Shriner said Thursday.
“The experiment was over anyway,” Shriner said. “That’s the judiciary process.”
Food and Water Watch officials expected the Kampachi Farms project might end before the legal proceedings wrapped up. The organization filed its lawsuit in August.
Food and Water Watch is now waiting for the next permit application to be filed, she said, to see what next legal step the organization should take.
The organization was protesting the permit that allowed Kampachi Farms to test a floating fish pen off Hawaii Island’s western coast. The lawsuit claimed the federal government did not have the authority to grant the permit and the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to adequately assess the project’s environmental impacts.
“We hope the National Marine Fisheries won’t issue another permit,” Shriner said. “We hope they’ll require an aquaculture permit, not a fishing permit. It’s a little ridiculous.”
Kampachi Farms Co-CEO Neil Sims said the permit the company applied for, as Kona Blue Water Farms, and received is the established requirement for open ocean aquaculture.
“NOAA’s position is that aquaculture is fishing,” Sims said. “We can’t do anything but abide by what the federal government says.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service is under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Other, similar “frivolous” lawsuits against federal government agencies have been dismissed, Sims added.
The Velella project wrapped up in February. Sims said it was resoundingly successful.
“We were really pleased with the project and the results we obtained,” he added.
The floating pen ranged from three to 75 miles off shore.
Kampachi Farms does plan a second test project, this time with the pen on a single mooring.
Email Erin Miller at
emiller@westhawaiitoday.com.
