The West Hawai’i Fishery Council was formed as an advisory body to the Department of Land and Natural Resources on issues relating to the near shore marine environment in West Hawai’i. These issues include fishery management, resource replenishment, reef health, user conflicts and many others. Because this is a collection of stakeholder representatives, our aim is to have as many different stakeholder groups and geographical regions represented. To do this, we developed a matrix that shows which groups and areas already have representation. Boxes with circles indicate there is at least one representative of that group on the Council. It does not indicate that no one else can represent that designation, especially for large and important groups such as recreational fishers. We try to spread the representation as widely and evenly as possible. That means that if we have a lot of applicants from only one matrix designation, we will have to turn some of them down, even though we still have openings in the Council itself. Right at the moment we have no openings in the aquarium collecting designation. We need more recreational, commercial and regional fishers as representatives of those stakeholder groups. Please note that Council members do not represent themselves only. They must have a constituency, a group of people to whom they have access and can routinely gather the input of the larger group to bring back to the Council. For instance, if you join the Council as a recreational fisherman from Keauhou, you will be expected to contact other fishers from that general area and poll them for how they feel about any particular issue. The Council makes no decisions and takes no votes on issues until each member has had at least a month to get input from his stakeholder group. If you:
- want to serve your community
- want to give your stakeholder group more of a voice in marine decisions
- can fill one of the empty spots in the matrix,
please consider joining. You can find a downloadable copy of the application form here.