LIHU‘E — County officials said Monday that the supervisors involved in a recent fishing trip aboard a Kaua‘i Fire Department boat off the coast of Ni‘ihau have been disciplined. But Keith Robinson, who co-owns the Forbidden Island with his brother
LIHU‘E — County officials said Monday that the supervisors involved in a recent fishing trip aboard a Kaua‘i Fire Department boat off the coast of Ni‘ihau have been disciplined.
But Keith Robinson, who co-owns the Forbidden Island with his brother Bruce Robinson, is more concerned with what the continued plundering of those waters means for the endangered Hawaiian monk seals who live there.
Ni‘ihau has become the target of many fishermen, he said, noting the island’s surrounding waters are off-limits to non-residents.
Trying to stop the illegal trespassing, the island’s owners secretly set up a video camera crew to “deal with the destructive raiding of the Kaua‘i fishermen and tour boats,” Keith Robinson said in a letter to Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.
Catching a Kaua‘i Fire Department boat, apparently loaded with firemen fishing and diving in close proximity to a monk seal haven, was unexpected, he said. He suggested to Carvalho that any disciplinary action against the firemen involved be restricted to a “good scolding and a stern admonition not to do it again.”
“Unfortunately, your Kaua‘i Fire Department’s fire rescue boat happened to wander into range of the video camera crews while it was doing some recreational fishing close in one of the main monk seal pupping areas,” he told the mayor in the letter.
County spokeswoman Mary Daubert said that following the incident, Carvalho asked KFD Chief Robert Westerman to conduct a full investigation, which resulted in disciplinary action.
“The mayor does not condone the action of those involved and feels the department has responded to the incident appropriately,” she said.
Pressed to disclose what the disciplinary action was, Daubert said she could not comment further because it was a personnel matter.
KFD Deputy Fire Chief John Blalock said the case was handled by KFD, but the disciplinary action could not be disclosed.
“It’s a KFD personnel issue that we’re dealing with,” he said. “Disciplinary actions were taken with the supervisors that were involved, and that’s about as far as I can probably go.”
Keith Robinson said in the letter that each year the Kaua‘i fishermen’s raiding of waters surrounding Ni‘ihau has gotten worse, noting it has been “more brazen and confrontational.”
The fishermen have started landing on Ni‘ihau and fishing in monk seal haul-out places without concern for nursing seals and pups, he said.
“We also started to find the dead carcasses of monk seals along the shorelines, something that had never happened before,” he said.
Keith Robinson said he planned to videotape the “deliberate plundering of the monk seal habitat,” and hand it to national and international TV programs.
“Good Morning America,” which recently went to Ni‘ihau to document the monk seal conservation work done there, was on the list of TV programs to which Robinson said he would send footage.
King Kamehameha V sold Ni‘ihau in 1864 for $10,000 in gold to Elizabeth Sinclair, who later became Sinclair-Robinson, he said.
Keith and Bruce Robinson are direct descendants of Sinclair-Robinson. Keith Robinson said when the island was purchased from Kamehameha V, the outlying reefs and nearshore waters were also acquired, according to the Hawaiian laws of that time.
“We have never renounced claim to those areas,” he said, adding that they have “carefully conserved and maintained them” so the Native Hawaiians on Ni‘ihau can have a sufficient supply of fish.
Keith Robinson said Ni‘ihau plays a unique role to the survival of the highly endangered Hawaiian monk seal. Some 1,100 monk seals are estimated to remain in the world and their population is suspected to be steadily declining.
On Ni‘ihau, however, the monk seals “found an ideal environment,” and have thrived and increased in numbers since 1986, according to Keith Robinson, who said the island plays a “unique and potentially vital role in the continued survival of the monk seal species.”
He told Carvalho that the incident was a “perfect illustration of the fact that large numbers of Kaua‘i fishermen, having devastated the reefs and fisheries of their own island, are now going to Ni‘ihau and deliberately doing their plundering” in the main monk seal habitat there.
• Léo Azambuja, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or lazambuja@kauaipubco.com.
