Should fishermen be allowed to harvest fish in the wild?

One thing is certain: The state of Hawai'i, through its Department of Land and Natural Resources, is doing everything within its power to forever end extractive uses of our ocean resource.

Fishermen are beyond upset. Not only serious fishermen, but family and friends — regular folks who enjoy fishing.

Like it or not, DLNR's leader, Peter Young, doesn't want you fishing.

Period.

In addition to the 20 percent of our shoreline areas closed to fishing, which include marine areas surrounding Kaho'olawe, restricted military zones, harbors, three totally closed marine life conservation districts, eight partially closed districts and 17 fisheries management areas throughout our state, the DLNR supports the following:

Closing the Northwest-Hawaiian Islands permanently to fishing; a moratorium on tropical fish collection in nine areas on the west side of the Big Island totaling 42 miles of ocean; and proposals to ban all spearfishing along the west side of the Big Island.

It also supports newly expanded bottom-fish area closures for the main Hawaiian Islands, and newly drafted rules to ban gill-net fishing, including a 100 percent ban off Maui, in Kane'ohe and Kailua bays, and from Hawai'i Kai to Ho-nolulu Harbor.

Furthermore, proposed re-classification of all "ocean use zones" opens up the potential for further restriction on fishing in already limited areas as well as new rules to prohibit fishing equipment in all 19 natural area reserves.

For fishermen, this adds up to a whole lot of "nowhere to go fishing."

Given DLNR's strong relationships with environmental groups, biased efforts to close fishing in Hawai'i are inevitable.

The state land department has shown it has committed its efforts to allow environmental groups to favorably work the system from the inside by nominating the director of the Hawai'i Audubon Society to fill the commercial-fishing industry seat on the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Council.

It also has partnered with the Nature Conservancy to administer their volunteer enforcement patrol program, Mauka Makai Watch, as well as using a known anti-fishing nongovernmental organization — the Ocean Conservancy — report to bolster the state's argument for the permanent fishing ban in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

And the list goes on.

Its time for all parties to come clean and put forth the real question: Will human beings be allowed to harvest wild stocks of fish? Or has the paradigm shifted so far that we now betray our fishermen/gatherers and culture in exchange for nearshore feedlot aquaculture intermingled with no-touch viewing focused on tourist -based eco-ocean enterprises?

Economically, the numbers are impressive.

Yet every time I hear the multimillion-dollar figure attached to the "success" of Hanauma Bay, I can't help but think about the 2.5 millionth tourist that hones shiny that poor reef.

The argument for the complete prohibition of fishing to "protect the reef" doesn't add up when you think about the threat from continued runoff, silt, alien algae, pollution and sewage that our reefs must face.

Hawai'i's fishermen would like to continue fishing — sustainably. Let's stop hiding behind doom-and-gloom rhetoric and environmental proclamations. Use sound science to figure out how much fishing (and Coppertone) the resource can handle, and manage it.

Let's not close it forever. It's a part of Hawai'i worth keeping.

Tony Costa is a Hawai'i nearshore fisherman. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.