End of an era? Lahaina fire delivers big blow to already declining commercial fishing industry

For 45 years, the Lahaina Small Boat Harbor was like a second home for Donnell “Andy” Tate, who for decades served as its weighmaster. Over the years, he got to know all of the boats and captains, pioneered digital scales used in the harbor, and sold his own catch to restaurants like Pacific’o on the Beach. 

Tate also put readers “in the fishing chair, reeling in the marlin,” while documenting the biggest fish stories as a journalist and photographer for Hawaiʻi Fishing News and the Lahaina News.

He recalled the late 1970s, when fishermen on small boats were able to win $15,000 jackpots and Lahaina Harbor was like “one big party,” with the captains and crew grabbing beers and bragging about the size of their catches to the ladies.

But those good old days memories of the harbor for Tate, now 73, are clouded by the fire of Aug. 8, 2023, when he fled his Lahaina Shores home with only his camera gear and could only watch from a distance through a black wall of smoke as the town, the harbor, most of the boats and his life as he knew it went up in flames.

The commercial fisherman and sportfishing charter operations at the harbor had suffered during COVID-19, when Lahaina became a ghost town for more than six months, forcing some fishermen out of business or to move to bluer waters.

But the fire — which badly damaged the 99-slip harbor, destroyed all but 13 boats and left the nearshore waters a mess, filled with oil and debris — has been an even bigger, and perhaps more permanent blow.

The Lahaina fishing community is witnessing what feels like the end of an era, said Capt. Chimo Shipp.

The decline began, he said, when some commercial fishermen “were kicked out of the harbor a long time ago to make room for tour boats.” Adding to the demise has been the COVID-19 pandemic that led to many in the fishing business finding different kinds of work or retiring early, with no young replacements for the lost “old-timers.”

“And then the fires impacted what was left, which wasn’t a lot,” Shipp said. “Nobody’s fishing. It’s a hard job.”

A year ago, Shipp’s Maui Fresh Fish seafood market was the largest buyer and seller of locally caught fish on the island. Shipp said the amount of seafood his business bought and sold fluctuated each month, but roughly estimated it could reach as high as 10,000 pounds in a month.

But since the fire, Shipp’s business has struggled with both supply and demand.

His supply of fish has gone down with the loss of the Lahaina Harbor-based trollers. Many have already left West Maui due to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ timeline of at least two-plus years for the estimated $30 million in damage to be repaired in order to reopen the harbor.

Shipp also lost many of his restaurant customers who buy the fish because their establishments along Front Street and other parts of the town are gone. And for those restaurants that are still in business, the need for fish is significantly down because of Maui’s steep tourism decline of more than 20%.

A decade before the fires, in 2013, Maui County fishermen landed 792,418 pounds of seafood. In 2023, that number was only 465,249 pounds, according to DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources.

Before the fires, there were 12 commercial fishing boats operating out of Lahaina Harbor and six out of Māʻalaea Small Boat Harbor. Now there are half as many.

Three charter boats formerly docked in Lahaina Harbor are now docked at Māʻalaea, with the possibility of two more boats also doing so, according to DLNR’s Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation.

Some fishermen whose boats were docked at the Lahaina Harbor also lost their homes in the fire, and are struggling to find stable affordable housing. Others are struggling with trauma from the devastating experience and loss.

And there is no pipeline to replace them. Shipp says the local industry has not trained enough young fishermen or provided affordable opportunities to start a fishing business.

According to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries’ survey, only 9% of Hawaiʻi small boat fishermen are under 35 years old, while almost 64% are over 54.

On Monday morning, the day before the Aug. 8 fire, the harbor was closed due to winds that had picked up to unsafe levels as Hurricane Dora traveled in a westerly direction south of the Hawaiian Islands.

On Tuesday afternoon, the fire that would do the most damage to Lahaina town began and spread quickly in the high winds. At the harbor, winds knocked over fuel tanks and blew hot embers into the sea of diesel, catching fire to mooring lines and releasing boats into the oil spill.

Some people attempted to get their boats out of the north end, but failed and were force to jump into the water and swim back to the break wall. Only 13 boats of 95 docked there that day survived, including two commercial charter boats, the Jawhawk and the aptly named “Reel Luckey.”

In the ensuing months, Tate couldn’t stop reliving the last 60 seconds of looking down his driveway. The visits to his former Lahaina home turned his fingernails and toenails black, numbed his nerves and took his breath away, until he knew he “had to get the hell out of Dodge.” 

“My business burned up. I didn’t have a job anymore,” Tate said. “My PTSD was going off the wall. I knew I couldn’t stay there anymore.” 

Before the end of the year, he packed his belongings and moved to the Big Island with no plans to rebuild or return.

FROM LAHAINA TO KONA, MAYBE FOREVER

Kevin Campbell, a light-tackle bottom fisherman who used to sell ʻōpakapaka to Honu Oceanside on his boat named “Drifter,” originally wanted to stay in Lahaina after the fire. This was despite losing his home, boat and tourism-driven fishing job.

But he said he got pushed out due to the difficulty of finding an affordable place to live and the year it would take to rebuild the Lahaina Small Boat Harbor. 

In October, Campbell bought a private charter business in Kona, a place he had been allured by before the fires, and moved there with his wife Tasha and newborn son Kade. His transition to Kona has been met with aloha by the many fishermen at Honokōhau Small Boat Harbor, he said.

Campbell doesn’t plan on moving back to Maui, despite missing Lahaina “so much it hurts.” Half of his friends and community that he misses also have moved to other islands or the mainland, an issue he chalks up to getting priced out for housing.

Also joining him in Kona was born-and-raised Lahaina fisherman Sean Hudson, who had operated Finest Kind Sportfishing Charters with one 35-footer named the “Reel Hooker.” He had captained boats that had been in his family and Lahaina Harbor for three generations, since 1972.

In the fire, Hudson lost his livelihood with the destruction of three of his four charter boats.

Before the fire, John Burke, a 59-year-old veteran of Lahaina Harbor who had worked for the charter company Start Me Up Sportfishing, had relocated to Kona due to losing his livelihood during the COVID-19 shutdown.

At the time, Burke says his decision to relocate was met with skepticism by some who believed that charters were cheaper in Kona, making it harder to turn a profit. But he found that the consistently larger catches more than made up for the lower fees, and now, “a lot of guys from Maui are calling looking for work” in Kona. 

Burke owns “Skillet,” a boat named after his late cousin. While he misses Lahaina and the community he grew up in, he says the fishing is better in Kona with better opportunities than in Lahaina.

“I wouldn’t move back to Lahaina to fish,” he said, explaining there was not a “single day in the last year” that he didn’t have a marlin bite.

As the world’s marlin capital, Kona is characteristically known for its steep drop-offs just offshore, providing access almost year-round to a variety of pelagic fish, blue marlin, yellowfin tuna (ʻahi), wahoo (ono) and mahi-mahi. The majority of the Big Island harbor boats are run by part-time and full-time commercial fishermen and commercial sportfishing charter boats who last year landed 640,000 pounds of fish compared to Maui County’s combined total of 465,000 pounds.

MAKING IT WORK WHILE WAITING ON THE HARBOR

Some fishermen are making do at other locations around the island while waiting for the repairs to the Lahaina Small Boat Harbor.

The DLNR began to address dredging plans for the harbor in March. Its project list and timeline continues to face delays as it awaits funding. Progress was made with the fuel dock being restored March 30, and reopening on Aug. 6. 

On Aug. 27, following a request for an update on the harbor work, officials from the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation said the harbor has been cleared of debris and pilings and was expected to be operational in two-plus years, but did not provide more details.

Some of the small-boat fishermen from Lahaina who are trying to stay afloat say they have shifted away from supplying restaurants and toward feeding the Maui community, where more than 30% of families do not have enough to eat. 

Maui Fresh Fish seafood market, which lost the bulk of its accounts on Front Street and Lahaina Harbor, has continued to buy local Maui landings, which are then prepared and donated to Maui fire survivors. This is done through Fresh Help Maui, a nonprofit initiative that Shipp started and of which he is the executive director. The organization had been running on private donations, but recently received a two-month Hawaiʻi Community Foundation grant through its Maui Strong Fund.

Among the three former Lahaina charter fishing boat operations that have moved to Māʻalaea is Terry Kellum, 69, who lost his boat in the fire but now is operating with a new iteration of his charter vessel, the “Hinatea III.”

In November, he moved to the new dock and has since donated some of his fish to Lahaina families. Consequently, he loses out on about a third of his earnings that came from selling to Front Street restaurants, he said.

Hawaiʻi is one of the few states in which charter boats can sell their catch. Sportfishing charters in Lahaina had the unique advantage of making a profit on excess fish, including fresh Maui fish caught just 25 miles or so offshore, that could be sold to a dense market of restaurants located just across the street.

As conveniently located Front Street’s restaurants closed in the pandemic and since the wildfire, some explored different outlets for sales.

A report by the NOAA Fisheries in 2023 showed that 10 years ago, restaurants and stores were the “most commonly used outlet for Maui’s small-boat fishermen,” but after the pandemic, more Maui fishermen were “selling their fish to friends, neighbors and coworkers” than to restaurants.

But the loss of Lahaina fishing boats hasn’t seemed to hurt the ability of major brokers to supply fresh fish on Maui.

According to chef Peter Merriman, who owns restaurants in Kapalua, Kāʻanapali, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Island and Kauaʻi, the drop in West Maui’s local catches has not affected its stock or costs to acquire abundant fish from purveyors. 

In general, Maui restaurants have not been reliant on local fish supply, said Brooks Takenaka of the United Fishing Agency, which runs the Honolulu Fish Auction, the largest fish market in the state.

Takenaka said the quality may not be the same between the auction block at Pier 38 and certain locally caught options, like monchong, ʻōpakapaka and mahi, but Maui’s local supply has always had a hard time fulfilling the demand for fresh fish. 

“It’s really hard to find actual local fish in any stores anywhere, but even more recently you can’t even find the fish that was labeled local but wasn’t,” Shipp said. “It’s definitely harder to source fresh fish that’s not even caught on Maui, but caught in the state. … It was always a part of our culture, but that seems to be going away, too.”

In addition to losing out on fish sales, Kellum says it hasn’t been a smooth transition from Lahaina to Māʻalaea. To fit the slip requirement in Māʻalaea, the Hinatea III, a 34-foot Blackfin, is a downsize from its predecessor, a 42-foot Bertram Motor Yacht. And, the safety railing provided for his slip broke while two customers leaned against it and still hasn’t been fixed. His commute also is an hour longer.

He said he would “1,000 times rather be back in Lahaina.”

Another Māʻalaea Harbor transplant from Lahaina Harbor, deckhand Danny Wike, 23, says from Lahaina he could get to better fishing spots faster and with less fuel.

“I don’t love it,” Wike said. “But I’m happy to be working, to be fishing. A lot of people in Lahaina don’t have work, so I gotta count my blessings.”

*JD Pells is a writer for Maui Now, a partner of the Hawai’i Journalism Initiative.

**This story contains a correction on the amount of seafood bought and sold by Shipp’s Maui Fresh Fish. Previously reported totals were based on information provided to the Hawai’i Journalism Initiative.