

It comes from a fish eating algae and it becomes more concentrated in predators who consume reef fish. For the complete list visit DAR’s website.Ĭigratera is a toxin that accumulates in reef fish. If they are not listed below they do not have limits or are not included on our list of fish for new spear fishermen.

Size Limits for Spearfishing Hawaiian Reef FishĪll of the fish below have size and bag limits. Here are some of the best predator fish to hunt for new spearfishermen: Hawaiian Hogfish aka Table Boss (A’awa).Here are some of the best herbivores to hunt for new spearfishermen: Shoot them in the guts (makes the meat taste bad).When hunting herbivores its important to note that these fish are used to being chased or eaten and will always be wary of predators.

RUV comparisons, to predator counts between different diver-based methods and cameras.The motivations of the prey you are hunting is one of the first things to take into account when hunting your prey. We also have several draft manuscripts in varying stages of completion, ranging from BRUV vs. We’re currently either processing or analyzing mesophotic BRUV imagery collected around Tutuila, American Samoa (collected in 2012) and Guam (2014), similarly looking at a range of questions that we penned for the Hawaiian Archipelago. Can we expect any follow-up on this work? Things changed through the years from lessons learned, ranging from the types of lines and floats you use and ways of dealing with camera station hang-ups, to streamlining/simplifying stratified random surveys to keep from trying to “do too much”. Shoestring budget and youth worked well at first…but now, I’d go with readily available haul-back solutions, along with using more miniaturized, off-the-shelf tech which is readily available. I first started deploying BRUVS using a hand-cranked Harken windlass. However: it was working with Steve Lindfield in 2010 (my first exposure to BRUV surveys) in Guam and the CNMI that opened my eyes what we could do in the Hawaiian Archipelago.Īny important lessons learned (through mistakes, experience or methodological advances)? They all played a major role, which would have made this work difficult (nigh on impossible) without their help. There are many…numerous interns, scientists, and ship/deck departments. Other than your co-authors, with whom would you like to share credit for this work? The juvenile opakapaka (Pristipomoides filamentosus) showing up at a few sites along the Maui-Nui Halimeda beds come a close second. Any time sharks showed up in the footage was cause for excitement. We surveyed a handful of sites along one ridge, which were teeming with fishes, were structurally complex, and had a tiger shark cruising through. With its deep valleys, waterfalls, and sea cliffs, the scenery was incredible.īelow water? The mesophotic ridges running between Maui and Lanai. What was your favorite research site in this study and why?ĭifferent answers, depending on whether you’re looking above or below water.Ībove water? All of the sites around northern Molokai. Finish lines can seem so far away from a project’s original inception.Ī grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) tastes the bait arm off the coast of Maui (68 m depth) The day that the paper was published in Frontiers of Marine Science, Coral Reefs. What was the most memorable moment in undertaking this study? These older systems were considerably heavier than the newer tech available today. Everything had to be hand-pulled up from the bottom. The electric windlass failed right as we began our BRUVS haul-back. If there was a single, standout memory: we had three BRUVS deployed to 100 m, along one of the ridges that runs between Maui and Lanai. Around the Maui-Nui area, there were some days when you’d see the wind line moving through ~ 1 – 2 PM, knew that there really wasn’t a lee to tuck into, and that the next few hours were going to be a rough-go.

These ranged from hiccups in international, bulk shipping of BRUV cameras and housings between Hawaii and Australia (e.g., cameras misplaced during one shipping cycle, and were eventually tracked down to a wayward facility in British Columbia after missing for 10 days!) to some pretty bumpy days of BRUV sampling. There were many, in varying degrees of scale. What was the most challenging aspect of your study (can be anything from field, lab to analysis)? “Using BRUVs to understand Hawaiian mesophotic reef fish assemblages”
