Longliners tied up at Honolulu s Pier 38. Photo courtesy HawaiiSeafood.org.
After two decades it’s far past time to make it easier for foreign fishermen who work in the Hawaii longline fleet, industry advocates say.
The lockdown after the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., still reverberates in the U.S. Pacific pelagic fishery, with complicated entry rules and procedures for crew from Indonesia and the Philippines who make up the bulk of the fleet’s workforce.
“Prior to 9/11 our crewmen were allowed to fly into” Honolulu to board the fleet of some 140 longline vessels, said Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association.