250 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



themselves iuside. Once iuside they cauuot retniu. This basket is 

 left from two days to a week in a position at the bottom of the sea, 

 when the stones are displaced, the basliet and its contents are hauled 

 up to the canoe or boat, a door left at the smaller end of the basket is 

 opened, the fish shaken out, and the basket is ready to be replaced in 

 the sea. 



There are only seven kinds of fish sought for in fishing with rod, hook, 

 and line. The bait most liked is shrijup; earthworms are sometimes 

 used and any obtainable fry offish. The fisherman takes a handful of 

 shrimjis, baits his hooks, and then, bruising the remainder and wraj)- 

 ping it up in cocoa-nut fiber, ties it with a pebble on the line and close 

 to the hooks ; the bruised matter spreads through the water when the 

 line is dropped and serves to attract fishes to the vicinity of the hooks. 



For hook-and-line fishing practiced in deep water, bonitos and lob- 

 sters are the usual bait ; for lack of these any kind of fish is used with 

 varying results. For deep-sea fishing the hook and line are used with- 

 out rods, and our fishermen sometimes use lines over 100 fathoms in 

 length. Every rocky protuberance from the bottom of the sea for miles 

 out, in the waters surrounding the islands, was well known to the an- 

 cient fishermen, and so were the different kinds of rock fish likely to 

 be met with on each separate rock. The ordinary habitat of every 

 known species of Hawaiian fishes was also well known to them. Th(^ 

 often went fishing so far out from land as to be entirely out of sight of 

 the low lands and mountain sloi)es, and took their bearing from the po- 

 sitions of the different mountain pteaks, for the purpose of ascertaining 

 the rock which was the habitat of the iiarticular fish they were after. 



The natives distinguish the sharks seen in Hawaiian waters into five 

 species: The " mano-kihikihi" (hammer-headed shark) and the"]ala- 

 kea" (white fin) are considered edible, as the natives insist that these 

 never eat human beings; then comes the "mano-kanaka" (man shark),- 

 which only rarely bites people; then the " mano," a large white shark, ;^ 

 the largest of all known to Hawaiiaus, but not a ))articularly ravenous 

 one, which is seldom seen ; the "uiuhi " com[)letes the list, a very large/ 

 shark, and the fiercest of all, which, fortunately, very rarely makes its 

 ap[)earance in Hawaiian waters. 



There are two general divisions of the kinds of nets in use here, the 

 long nets and tlie bag or purse nets, with endless variations of those 

 two main features. The finest of the long nets has a mesh one-half inch 

 wide. Ifc is generally 1^ fathoms in dei)th and from 40 to 60 fathoms 

 in h'ngtli. It is used to surround and catch the small mullets and 

 "awas" in shallow waters for the purpose of stocking fish ponds. 

 Small pebbles, frequently ringed or pierced, are used for sinkers and 

 pieces of the Ilibiscus tilkiceiis and candle-nut tree for the floaters. Nets 

 of 1 to 2 inch mesh are used for the larger mullets. A 2 to 2^ inch gill- 

 net is sometimes stretched from a given point to another at high tide, 

 and always across what they call fish-runs in shallow waters, which are 



