History, Current Status, and the Future of Open Ocean Aquaculture Permitting and Leasing in Hawaii

It is a necessary conclusion that ultimately the scientific insights into the impacts of open ocean aquaculture must be turned into policies, laws, and regulations governing industry development. Hawaii established a state law in 1986 to allow leasing of state marine waters for aquaculture
and ocean energy purposes. Due to legislature concerns, however, the final statute only had limited applicability for small research projects (Corbin and Young 1997). Hawaii amended its state law in 1999 to correct these problems and encourage large-scale commercial aquaculture use of offshore waters (Cates et al. 2001). A coalition of state, university, and private sector interests engaged the public and supported this far-reaching change in the state legislature because: hatchery technology for mass rearing of local species was available; growout technology suitable for local open ocean conditions was commercially available; a federally funded, large- scale demonstration of cage culture, gathering real data, was underway (Ostrowski et al. 2001); experienced ocean interests were ready to invest in commercial aquaculture projects; and there existed strong state and public support for aquaculture for economic development.