was recognized. However, the responsibility for such monitor- 

 ing would not rest with the council. While lobsters were 

 shown to be a significant part of the diet of monk seals around 

 Laysan, the plan simply assumed that not to be the case for the 

 rest of the area. The MMPA and ESA issues were recognized, but 

 the only action taken with respect to them in the plan was in- 

 clusion of gear regulations intended to prevent incidental catch 

 of seals . 



The council assumed that it did not have responsibility for 

 demonstrating plan compliance with the MMPA and ESA, but instead 

 that other agencies must document that the plan does not 

 comply before the council needed to take action responding to 

 the MMPA or ESA. 



The spiny lobster plan illustrated the problem of resource 

 management with insufficient data. In this case the best avail- 

 able scientific information is not sufficient to indicate 

 the importance of spiny lobsters in Hawaiian monk seal diet, 

 or the extent to which local lobster stocks depend on spawning 

 around other islands. Both of these unknown relationships in- 

 fluence the impact of a lobster fishery on monk seals. The 

 plan recommendation to increase fishery levels and try to monitor 

 the impacts on monk seals through observations of their popula- 

 tion dynamics implied that resource exploitation should con- 

 tinue until an adverse impact on monk seals was demonstrable, 

 at which time the ESA and MMPA protection of the seals would 

 require changes in the fishery. However, because monk seals are 

 long lived, it is quite possible that by the time a decline in 

 total population numbers could be observed and documented, se- 

 vere reductions in population numbers would be unavoidable. The 

 council has acted on the premise that because a risk to monk 

 seals of greatly intensified lobster fishing has not been demon- 

 strated by an agency such as the Marine Mammal Commission, that 

 increased harvesting should proceed. The council could have 

 chosen to delay greatly increased harvesting until such time as 

 its safety, that is a low risk of impact to monk seals, could 

 be documented. One possible alternative approach, with a 

 greater ecological safety margin, would have been to increase 

 fishing intensity gradually and only when a low risk of affect- 

 ing monk seal populations could be demonstrated. The latter ap- 

 proach would shift the burden of proving that a particular level 

 of resource utilization is compatible with the ecosystem con- 

 servation intent of environmental legislation onto the exploit- 

 ers of the resource. The risk of adverse impact on seals could 

 have been reduced through measures designed to allow only a 

 very slow growth of the fishery. 



F-23 



