Hawaii FEP - Western Pacific Fishery Council

4.3.6 Crustaceans Domestic Processing CapacityLobsters harvested in the Hawaii Archipelago are marketed as fresh product or as frozen lobstertails, with each vessel processing its catch at sea. In general, shrimp are considered luxury fooditems; therefore care in handling is practiced. Smaller vessels normally wash the shrimp andstore them in iced sea-water for transportation to protect the shrimp from enzyme-inducedreactions (King 1993). Larger vessels have the space on board to process the shrimp by quickfreezing them, which preserves their quality and allows them to be easily exported. Differentprocessing methods are acceptable for different uses of deepwater shrimp. Local markets,restaurants, and hotels use whole, fresh, chilled shrimp. Shrimp tails are less likely to be usedbecause of low meat recovery rates which is not commercially attractive (Oishi 1983).Thedomestic processing capacity and domestic processing levels will equal or exceed the harvest forthe foreseeable future.4.3.7 Crustaceans TALFFDomestic vessels have the capability to harvest the entire optimum yield from the fishery.Therefore the TALFF appears to be zero.4.4 Hawaii Archipelago Precious Coral Fisheries4.4.1 History of Patterns and UseThe ongoing collection of black coral from depths of 30–100 meters by scuba divers hascontinued in Hawaii since black coral beds were discovered off Lahaina, Maui, in the late1950s, although harvest levels have fluctuated with changes in demand. Since 1980, virtually allof the black coral harvested around the Hawaiian Islands has been taken by hand from a bedlocated in the Auau Channel. Most of the harvest has come from State of Hawaii waters;however, a portion of the black coral bed in the Auau Channel is located in the EEZ. In 1999,concern about the potential for greater harvesting pressure on the black coral resources led theState of Hawaii to prohibit the harvest of black coral with a base diameter of less than 3/4inches from state waters.After two decades of minimal activity, the domestic fishery for pink, gold, and bamboo preciouscorals in the EEZ of Hawaii resumed in December 1999. One company used two one-mansubmersibles to survey and harvest pink and gold corals at depths between 400–500 metersduring 1999 and 2001. However, they did not continue their operations after that time, and theactual harvests cannot be reported here because of data confidentiality policies that prohibit thepublication of proprietary information unless there are at least three separate operations includedin the dataset.In 1988, the domestic fishing vessel Kilauea used a tangle net dredge (now prohibited) to harvestbeds at Hancock Seamount in the NWHI. Their catch, however, consisted mostly of dead or lowqualitypink coral, and the operation was soon discontinued. In the mid-1980s, a companyexperimented with manned submersibles equipped with spotlights, cameras, and a variety of113