Roi Roundup

We ended up diving only on the second day but all in all the Roi Roundup proved a great success. Catch total for the entire event was 199 fish, 114 for Saturday and 85 Sunday. Our team of 3 divers, including myself, speared 17. I personally lost 4 but landed 5. A diver from Maui speared 28 on the first day, using only a 3-prong pole spear. Craziness!
Conditions weren’t the best with a tide change in the middle of the dive from high to low so getting back over the Puako reef with little wind swells breaking, was a bit of a challenge.
The event took place along a 1.5 mile stretch of coast line. We jumped in and swam 3/4 mile north (against the current) and finding the largest concentrations as we pressed northward. The reef at Puako is fairly long and extends out from the shore about 200 yds at a depth of 6-8 feet, then plunges to 50-60 feet as you come over the ledge. The bigger fish were down in these depths and the continued 50-60 foot dives took its toll on me quickly and I was only able to maintain a 25-30 consistency after that. We dove the buddy system which was one up one down (tournament style) which minimizes the risk should a diver have SWB (shallow water blackout).
Viz once over the ledge was about 75 feet with an upper layer of haze due to the wind. There are also fresh water spring up wellings which made for intense cold spots as well as blurry water columns.
There were about 10 other divers from Oahu and Maui and we all had a wonderful time talking fish and such.
It is mind boggling to think that we removed close to 200 fish from such a small section of coastline. Roi are considered top tier predatory fish with no real natural predators to keep them in check (think Lionfish in the Caribbean, but not nearly as devastating). The shear number of fish that the Roi consume on a daily basis are less then say an omilu (bluefin trevally), but it is the number of Roi in a given area that does causes so much damage to the reef ecosystem because they are so prolific. They love to eat small parrotfish, goatfish and yellow tang. Anyone would be hard pressed to find 200 of any other top tier predatory fish of any kind in that small amount of coast line, and that is something to think about.
The UH researchers were very pleased as they were able to take plenty of tissue samples.

Malama o kekai!

Check this out for more details:

http://www.coral.org/roiroundup

Peace!