Undersized ahi nets fine for Kalihi fishmonger
For the second time this year an Oahu seafood retailer has been fined for selling undersized seafood.
Marivic Fresh Seafoods & Meat, located in the Chinatown Market Place, on Friday was fined $2,000 criminal fine for selling undersized fish.
During an inspection on Nov. 18, a Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement officer observed several fish that appeared to be below the minimum size limit.
After weighing the fish, he cited 50-year-old Alfonso M. Chua for selling four ahi below the minimum size of 3 pounds. The smallest fish was 1.87 pounds, while the largest fish weighed 2.27 pounds. The fish were being offered for sale at a price of $6.95 per pound.
State regulations prohibits the sale of ahi weighing less than 3 pounds.
Chua was fined $500 per specimen.
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This was his second violation within a year. Chua was found guilty and fined $150 on June 9, of selling undersized Kona crab. Regulations prohibit possession or sale of any Kona crab less than four inches in length.
Most undersize sale violations are a criminal petty misdemeanor offense, with minimum fines of at least $100 for a first offense; $200 for a second offense; and $500 for a third offense. The Board of Land and Natural Resources can additionally pursue administrative penalties of up to $1,000 for a first violation; $2,000 for a second violation; and $3,000 for a third violation.
25 responses to “Undersized ahi nets fine for Kalihi fishmonger”
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They should go further and find and fine the crooks who caught those fish.
Yet another sign that the fisheries are collapsing. Earth’s population, the mouths to feed, keeps growing exponentially. The next sign will be wars over resources and then a world war as economies collapse. I guess it’s already happening with oil. What’s next, water?
..and the reason is that darn exponential population growth. And the media praise those producing large families instead of shaming them.
Thank you DLNR, go get um!
Sounds fishy to me, I’d like to hear about their Cesium isotope readings, using a geiger meter. I’d like to hear and see numbers of readings? And if they are high, the fishies go to a hongwangi school, and if the fishie readings are low, then they go to feed the homeles, and if there is no readings of radioactivity, then they go to the supermarkets. Similar to how they do it in Japan.
Please explain hongwangi school. Why if the fish are radioactive sent there?
You’re really obsessed with Fukushima, aren’t you?
Taking your remarks seriously, why would you wish harm on anybody? Do you really think some people deserve to be hurt?
You’re just a bitter person, aren’t you?
Try check the guys that sell fish on the side of the road. More shorts … The old kapu system had real punishments/deterrents !!
many violations everyday yet we hear of only one case on Oahu? DLNR fish enforcement useless
Good job, but they need to catch the knuckleheads that are supplying these illegal fishes. Too much greed.
The more we as consumers know, the better it is….and of course, avoid Marivic Seafood. Chinatown Market Place should be regulating its tenants as well, so I’ll think twice before going over there as well.
Is there a reason why the catch size does not have an upper limit either? I get that long lining makes that kind of hard to enforce, but we should be letting the largest of the individuals go free to breed and maintain the genes for larger sizes in the gene pool. No upper catch size limits causes catch species to favor smaller sizes. This is bad for them and bad for us.
Actually some yellowfin tuna will reach sexual maturity after 1 year, with 2-3 years old being the norm. So tuna are living fast and dying young in any case. A really old yellowfin or bigeye is 6-8 years old.
Marlin on the other hand are really hurt by harvesting the large females as they are the breeders that supply future generations. Almost all marlin over 400 pounds are breeding females. A mature blue marlin female can live over 25 years and reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years old when they weigh 250-275 pounds.
Gonna get tossed. They gotta prove the fish were caught in Hawaii waters. If the fish came from someplace like the Philippines, where minimum size limits are different, then all is forgiven.
I don’t think so. The violation is for selling the fish. The state is perfectly entitled to set rules for that, irrespective of where the fish was caught, because the sale transaction is here within the state.
It’s like selling elephant ivory, you don’t have to prove where the elephant was killed, only that it’s fresh ivory (not fossil ivory).
The new environmental court will be bringing some much needed consistency to the enforcement exercise.
Didn’t know there was such a thing as Ahi nets. Maybe that’s how they caught the undersized ahi.
someone needs to go back to school!
Undersized ahi nets fine for Kalihi fishmonger. That was a confusing headline. The most eye catching word of that headline was fishmonger. So I decided to click on this story. Without reading it, I thought the word “net” had to do with a fishing net. I thought that the word “fine” meant “okay”, instead of a criminal fine. Oh well no one is perfect, that’s why it’s best to have an independent set of eyes review a story and its headline, before publication. No one will ever forget “Pubic”.
Waipahu Market should get checked daily too. So many undersized fishes being sold there every day.
My sister works in the Division of Forestry and Wildlife of DLNR. I won’t let her know though. There’s quite a few others that read this paper, so they will catch your drift. Even Waipahu Market itself may check on their inner dealings.
Wow. DLNR actually did something. The whole time I was growing up, I can only recall seeing ONE DLNR officer. ONE. Deterrence is clearly not their strongest suit. So, just what do all those officers do to earn their keep because, goodness knows, they are scarce as hens’ teeth. It would seem that if these people were truly doing their jobs in enforcing game laws, maybe our inshore fisheries wouldn’t be as decimated as they are.
I was just there this past weekend and there were still Ahi’s under 3 pounds that I observed. This guy will not change.