H.R. 4528 is a little known congressional bill that passed into law on Aug. 2. It was introduced by Florida Congressman Darren Soto and will threaten at least 346 jobs, $12.5 million in direct income and $24.9 million in total revenue in Hawaii. Not so long ago, Hawaii’s U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye would have taken notice. The Hawaii congressional delegation would have done its job to protect Hawaii’s interest. The governor would have let his displeasure be known and the act would have been quietly altered or withdrawn. That is Washington politics.

But these are different times. The jobs in question belong to the Hawaii fishing industry, which once was considered an important part of Hawaii’s economy and working-class culture — but which today is of little interest to a new generation of Hawaii Democrats. Amid the votes to approve, though, Hawaii’s Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa did write a dissenting opinion.

The act, which was amended to the Billfish Preservation Act of 2012, closes an exemption in U.S. law that bans billfish imports but that allowed Hawaii’s fishers to sell Pacfic blue marlin (kajiki) and broadbill swordfish (shutome) caught in the Western Pacific to the U.S. mainland where they are popular in restaurants. In 2016 the Hawaii fishers’ catch was approximately 1 percent of the total world billfish catch of 127,049 metric tons. Unlike other areas, the U.S. Pacific billfish population, according to two recent studies by U.S. fisheries experts, does not suffer from overfishing.

The idea behind this technical amendment initiated by big-game fishers is that international industrial overfishing of billfish — swordfish, marlin and spearfish — is devastating billfish populations and impacting popular fishing tournaments in Florida and in countries like Costa Rica and Panama, which have tourism industries that depend on successful catch-and-release fishing tournaments. Because illegal shipments of frozen billfish continue to find their way to U.S. restaurants despite the ban on imports, they thought it important to close the Hawaii exemption.

Conservationists complain the U.S. government is lax in managing seafood imports. According to one study, 30-40 percent of all foreign seafood imports are mislabeled — meaning it is advertised as one kind of fish on restaurant menus but is really another. Often it is illegal Atlantic marlin.

This law gives the impression that something meaningful is being done to protect world billfish stocks. But the reality is that fish management regulations and enforcement in places like Central America are not strong, so nothing is really being done to protect the billfish. Since this legislation does not tackle the much harder problem of improving U.S. seafood import procedures, the impact is primarily cosmetic. It is just politics.

The threatened jobs of fish cutters and packers in Hawaii, however, are real. They support local families and pay mortgages. There was a time when Hawaii Democrats saw their role as defending the interests of Hawaii workers in Washington, D.C. With Hanabusa leaving, we should ask ourselves who will speak up for them now.

Michael Markrich, owner of Kailua-based Markrich Research, once wrote a history of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Council.