No to ‘mini-hotels’
The March 4 article, “California couple’s ‘mini-hotel’ draws complaints,” brought feelings of sadness to me.
I grew up in Honolulu in a neighborhood with cottages and hedges. We knew all our neighbors and supported each other with aloha.
My old neighborhood now sports high cement walls, huge cement homes and very little ambiance and aloha.
Allowing “mini-hotels” in our neighborhoods will have many drawbacks.
Lucky we live Hawaii, but maybe not for long!
Laurie Connable
Hilo
Aquarium fishing
I completely disagree with banning aquarium fishing in Hawaii for a few main reasons, the biggest one being that the aquarium industry is not having nearly as much of an impact on the long-term health of the reef as fishermen.
The way Hawaii’s fisheries work, you do not need a fishing license to shore fish. It is almost completely unregulated, and you can basically catch as many fish as you want for most types. This means fisherman often catch the bigger, breeding adult fish for food. Same thing with spearfishing: The bigger breeding adult fish are targeted and killed.
The aquarium industry does not go after the adult fish, being that there is an extremely low demand for adult fish in the aquarium industry.
Take the sailfin tang, for example. In the wild, they can reach sizes of up 18 inches long. The largest specimen I have ever seen or heard about offered for sale from an aquarium shop was 6 inches. Not even close to the adult size. However, fisherman will target the giant, 18-inch-long adults for the obvious reason that they provide more meat. If any group should be getting a restriction, it should be the group that causes the most damage to the overall long-term population.
Tangs, one of the fish frequently caught for aquariums, reach sexual maturity at about 5 years old and can live up to 30 years in the wild. Tangs spawn frequently at full moons. A spear fisherman killing a mature breeding adult does in fact cause more damage to the long-term fish population than the aquarium trade collecting juvenile fish.
Kyle Fujii
San Mateo, Calif.