498 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 
into the narrow space between the bulkheads, from which they are 
dipped out by means of hand dip nets. In the sea ponds the gate is 
opened when the tide is coming in and when it turns it is closed. 
There is usually a small runway, built of two parallel rows of loosely 
piled stones from the gate to about 10 feet into the pond. As the fish 
congregate in this runway when the tide is going out, it is very easy to 
dip out the supply needed for market. Seines and gill nets are also 
swept around the inside of the ponds at times in taking fish from them, 
and as they are quite shallow this is done easily. 
The sea ponds usually contain only the amaama, or mullet, and the 
awa. In the fresh and the brackish water ponds gold-fish, china-fish, 
oopu, opai, carp, aholehole, and okuhekuhe are kept. Practically 
no attempt at fish-culture is made with these ponds. Besides the 
fish which come in through the open gates, the owner usually has men 
engaged at certain seasons of the year in catching young amaama and 
awa in the open sea and bays, and transporting them alive to the fish 
ponds. They are kept in the ponds until they attain a marketable 
size, and longer frequently if the prices quoted in the market-are not 
satisfactory. They cost almost nothing to keep, as the fish find their 
own food in the sea ponds. It is supposed that they eat a fine moss 
which is quite common in the ponds. 
There are probably not more than one-half the number of ponds in 
use to-day that there were thirty years ago. There are numerous 
reasons for this, the principal ones being as follows: 
1. The native population is dying off rapidly, and where there were 
prosperous and populous villages in the early years of the last century 
there is practically a wilderness now. Owing to this depopulation 
there would be no sale for fish in the immediate neighborhood of the 
ponds there, the only place where it could be sold owing to the 
difficulty in transporting fish any distance without the use of ice, and 
the ponds would naturally be allowed to go to decay, the walls break- 
ing down from the action of storms, and the sea filling them with 
sand when they are located on the immediate shore. ‘This condition 
of affairs is especially prevalent on Molokai. 
2. Two of the important crops of the islands are rice and taro. As 
both must be grown in a few inches of water, and are very profitable 
crops, a number of the interior ponds were turned into rice fields and 
taro patches. Oahu has shown the greatest changes in this regard. 
3. On Hawaii ponds were filled up by the volcanic lava flows of 1801 
and 1859. The Kamehameha fish pond, which was filled up in this 
manner in 1859, was said to have been the largest on the islands. 
Only traces of it are now to be found on the beach. 
4. At Hilo, on Hawaii, some ponds, mostly quite small, are so filled 
with the water hyacinth that it is impossible to work them any more. 
This year a few of the best of these were cleaned out, but as there is 
