Something's fishy

(Luana:) One of the things I really love about Semester at Sea is that we're thinking about our world and seeing up close what is going on in it. So while Bob burrowed under the blankets, I eagerly popped out of bed at 5 a.m. on our last day in Hawaii to go on a field study led by the ship’s biology professor. Dan Abel, of Coastal Carolina University, had set up a trip to the United Fishing Agency fish auction on the docks in the industrial section of Honolulu. This is one of the largest fish auctions in the world and it offered students of Dan’s marine biology class an opportunity to explore sustainability issues in the fishing industry, as world fish stocks become depleted and fish becomes affordable for fewer and fewer inhabitants of the earth.

Originally, I wanted to tag along on this trip because I thought it would be a great photo opportunity, but I wound up learning a lot about how fish are caught, how they are valued, what people will pay, how the fisheries interact with endangered species like the monk seal and the sea turtle, and how the government is addressing these problems. None of these fish were net-caught; all were done from lines, which eliminates a lot of the problem of catching fish and creatures that shouldn't be caught. We saw some mammoth fish at this market -- ahi and yellowfin tuna, opah, ono -- and each one made its own little barcoded journey from ship to cart to pallet to auction to the purchaser’s truck. Some of the fish was headed for Japan to become sushi, but a lot of it goes to local restaurants and markets. One tuna alone sold for about $1,000, while another fish in very poor shape sold for 20 cents a pound!

They use so much ice to keep the fish cold as it travels through the morning’s process that they make their own in a building outside and it is constantly being squirted into rolling bins from a pipe that’s at least twice the size of a dryer vent.

The fish agency has a lot of very hard-working people doing very serious work, as it’s a huge business and a source of good employment, but everyone was very nice to us, even though we were a bit in the way. After we saw the docks and the auction, we had breakfast at one of the fish restaurants on the property. Most of the students couldn’t face the idea of fish for breakfast, but my theory is always go for what is special about a place, so I had an ahi tuna omelet that was garlicky and delicious, but sort of an odd match for coffee. We topped our morning off with a 75-minute lecture by a government biologist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (where I’ll admit my mind wandered a bit and I ran out of coffee...). All in all, a great experience.