On a single breath, divers plunged up to 85 feet into the deep.
They were spearfishers, who hunt fish by freediving, armed with a spear or speargun — a continuing Hawaiian tradition that dates back centuries.
In mid-May, the fishers gathered in Hawai’i’s Kealakekua Bay, ready to test their mettle. Over the next four hours, they competed in a tournament hosted by ʻIke Lawaiʻa, a local fishing organization, and supported by Conservation International-Hawaiʻi.
The stakes went beyond bragging rights — this was a hunt for invasive fish.
A south swell had turned the water milky and the current strong — not ideal conditions — but the mood among the 24 teams was electric. They methodically dived deep into the bay, hunting for roi, taʻape and toʻau — invasive fish that quietly outcompete native species the bay. By the end of the day, they had pulled 250 pounds of them from the water. That number is lower than last year’s haul of nearly 1,000 pounds, but the organizers couldn’t be happier about it. A smaller haul could signal progress: fewer invasive fish in the water.
“Last year was just a free for all,” said Jhana Young, Conservation International-Hawai‘i’s sustainable seafood lead. “Everywhere the fishers looked, there was roi. This year, they actually had to work for it.”
Divers who participated in the previous tournament reported seeing 10 to 15 percent fewer invasive fish this time around — a sign that the tournament may be helping reduce the pressure.
The tournaments are the first time spearfishing has been permitted in the protected bay in nearly 60 years. Many of the divers are direct descendants of those who had fished the bay for generations. What they encounter beneath the surface looks strikingly different from what their ancestors witnessed.
Since the late 1960s, the bay has been a protected marine area, with a strict ban on fishing designed to let its reefs and fish populations recover. In a cruel irony, that same protection allowed invasive fish populations to explode unchecked.
“Protected areas are meant to help nature rebound, but invasive species have upset that ability to rebalance” Young said. “There’s no sense in having a marine protected area that is essentially allowing invasives to live their best life.”
The history of how the bay got to this point is a cautionary tale. In the 1950s and 60s, in a misguided attempt to bolster local fisheries, taʻape, roi and toʻau were introduced to their waters. With few natural predators and, in Kealakekua, restricted fishing, the invasive species ran rampant, outcompeting native fish for food and habitat.
The consequences have been dramatic. Rather than taking pressure off native fish, the introduced species pushed them out. Roi has been the biggest problem. Large, voracious carnivores, they consume everything from juvenile fish to crabs. And because they can accumulate ciguatera — a toxin that builds up in the food chain — they’re not always safe to eat, making them nearly impossible to manage through commercial fishing.
The tournament is the community’s answer to that problem, and an opportunity to reconnect local families to their traditional places and practices. Organizers created the event as a way to take accountability for human-caused environmental damage while keeping traditional practices alive for future generations.
“It’s not the organism that’s invasive, it’s us introducing it,” said Hōkūokahalelani Pihana, who leads Conservation International’s Indigenous and community-based ocean governance work. “We created this problem. Now we’re solving it in our way.”
That commitment extends to what happens to the fish once they’re out of the water. The 250 pounds of fish caught in the tournament were turned into fertilizer, fish leather, and in the case of taʻape and toʻau, food. Nothing was wasted.
A portion of the catch was also collected by researchers at the University of Hawai’i, who are studying the life cycles of these species to determine whether an annual tournament is enough to keep populations in check, or whether more frequent interventions are needed. Their findings will also help shape statewide invasive species management.
That challenge looms large. Invasive species cost Hawai’i tens of millions of dollars each year. One University of Hawai’i biologist estimates that fishers would need to remove four times the current annual poundage of invasive species just to reach a manageable level statewide. And that pressure would need to be maintained — within 10 years the population could easily explode again if the fishing pressure were to let up at all.
On the shore of Kealakekua Bay that day, none of that seemed to dampen the mood.
“The greatest reward of the tournament isn’t the poundage of fish, it’s the community coming together,” said Hannah Rozendo, Conservation International-Hawai’i’s community-based monitoring manager. “It shows people that through collective action, we can shift the needle and restore our environment.”
Rozendo pointed to one moment that captured that feeling. A community elder, Uncle Chuck Leslie, who had grown up fishing the bay attended the tournament, watching traditions he thought lost being practiced again. He had crafted fishing nets by hand, which were presented as prizes to the winners.
“We get to celebrate as cultural practitioners of fishing, help the Bay, and celebrate our ʻohana in our place,” Leslie said. “In a space that has changed over time, with not many families left here, we come together to help our reefs and water recover. This event is really important for the community.”
Conservation International-Hawaiʻi hopes to build on the tournament’s success — expanding support to other communities interested in hosting their own invasive species competitions, and deepening ties between cultural practice and reef health. It’s work guided by an old Hawaiian proverb: E ola ʻoe, e ola mākou nei — when you thrive, we thrive.
