COMMERCIAL FISHERIES OE THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 
747 
means of hand dip nets. In the sea ponds the gate is opened when the tide is coming 
in and closed when it turns. 
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 used in taking fish from the ponds, a method which is 
easy, owing to the shallowness of the ponds. 
The sea ponds usually contain only the ama-ama, or mullet, and the awa. In the 
fresh and the brackish water ponds gold-fish, china-fish, oopu, opae, 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 at certain seasons of 
the year, the owner usually has men engaged in catching - young - amaama and awa in 
the open sea and bays, and transporting them alive to these enclosures, where they are 
kept until they attain a marketable size, and longer, frequently, if the prices quoted 
in the market are not satisfactory. It costs almost nothing to keep them, as they 
find their own food in the sea ponds. It. is supposed that they eat a fine moss which 
is quite common there. 
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 the following: 
1 . The native population is rapidly disappearing, and where there were prosperous 
and populous villages in the early years of the last century there is practically a wil- 
derness now. Owing to this depopulation, there is no sale for fish in the immediate 
neighborhood of the ponds, the only market possible, owing to the difficulty in trans- 
porting - any distance without the use of ice. The ponds have thus naturally been 
allowed to go to decay, the walls breaking down from the action of storms, and the 
sea filling them with sand if 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 respect. 
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 no longer possible to use them for fish. This year a few of 
the best of these were cleaned out, but as there is very little profit to be made from 
them, and their ownership is in dispute, there is but little desire to do much to build 
them up. 
5. Other ponds have been filled up to make way for building operations and for 
other purposes. This is especially true of ponds in and around Honolulu and 
Lahaina. There used to be a number of fish ponds on Lanai, but the}; - have all been 
allowed to fall into decay. 
