 Aloha, good morning. Here we are again with Stacey to the rescue. It just still makes you laugh. Anyway, my name is Stacey Hoyashi, and today we are talking to two boat owners, fishing crews, foreign fishing crews, and what's the real truth. So we have Kang Dang and Jim Cook, both of the Hawaii Long Line Association. Thank you. Good morning, guys. Thank you for having us on the show. Yeah, so let's assume that the people out there have seen that AP article about floating prisons. What do you have to say about that? You want to take the lead on this, Jim? I could. Well, there are very few prisons that you can get out of at your own free will. That you opt into. Perhaps it was a little planted in that way. And yes, of course, we have seen the articles, and we are very concerned about them. And we're in the midst of doing quite a number of things about them. So if you like, I could tell you a little bit of history of the use of foreign crews here. Sure. Yeah, that's great. So the fishery, the Long Line Fishery in Hawaii dates back to 1990, when Japanese immigrants started long-lining in Hawaii. And through all of those years up until the late 60s, it remained the fleet of 40 to 60 boats. And then people from the mainland became interested in the fishery. And between the late 60s and kind of the end of the 80s, the fleet grew up to around 45 boats. And then really in the next five or six years, they mustered up to around 140 boats, and that's where it is today. Crew members prior to 1987 have always been domestic hired here. In 1987, Coast Guard passed a law that allows us to use foreign crews on our vessels. And that was the time at which we started to do that. I think the real impetus for using foreign crews was that local domestic crews who were very difficult to get during this kind of work. And so over the period between around 1988 and, I don't know, probably up into the 2005 around in there, I would say somewhere around 90% of the vessels in the fleet converted to foreign crews as it has become increasingly harder to find domestic crews. Maybe you can share a little bit more about that. Why is it so hard to find a local crew? Fishing is extremely hard work. Fishing is dangerous work. These are documented facts. And our society has just become harder and harder to do. And in fact, when we look back at the history that goes into the early 90s and 80s, when we look at who was working on the boats, in many of those cases, they were compact people. So they were from Federal States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Pacific Island people who were able to get green cards and come to Hawaii and work in the fleet. And we very seldom saw what you'd call real local people, just not many at all. And then as the fleet grew and the amount of jobs grew, it became more and more difficult. And the nice thing about these foreign crews is they're well vetted by agencies and very professional. And so it's a lot nicer for the boats. But there are boats that have local crews, too, right? Yes. Probably, I'd say maybe up to 20 boats have local crews. I think John Viking, who has two boats with local crews, was interviewed the other day. And he is now in the process of transitioning his vessels to foreign crews just because it becomes harder and harder to find local people who can do the job. Right. So Kang, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your experience. So I mean, my family has been in the business for about 25 something odd years. So I've always been in and around the fishing industry growing up. But it wasn't until recently, maybe about five years ago that I kind of dove and head first into the industry and learned exactly how everything worked. You know, Jim was instrumental in kind of helping me get acquainted with what we do, not only on the boat owner side, but what challenges there are as part of the Hoi Long Line Association. So in my experience with the foreign fishermen, we've been using them for as long as I know. And personally, we have a lot of returning crew members. Just recently, I spoke with, as far as we go, most of our foreign fishermen are Filipino nationality. So I just spoke with our Filipino manning agent this morning and we just have the Philippine consulate come down, interview their nationals and just ask them generally how happy they were with the living conditions and the working conditions. And from what I've heard from our agent, he says they're very happy with the amount of food they're receiving, the fresh water, the pay and the working conditions, and they're all generally very happy. I think your people watching the show would be interested in the process of obtaining foreign crew. So the way that that process works is there are manning agencies in several different countries. In Hawaii, we use foreign crew from Vietnam, from Kiribati, from Philippines and Indonesia. And so the process is if you want to get a foreign crew, you contact a manning agency, you tell them what your requirements are, and they'll come back to you with a roster of maybe three or four times more people than you need, and then you can look at what the experience levels are and then pick an experience level. And so that's how you basically interact to get the crew. So these crews have a contract. So the owner of the boat has a contract with a foreign manning agency. And these manning agencies aren't only involved in fishing, they're involved in cruise ships, they're involved in oil tankers, and they're big. I think that the Philippines, for example, I don't know, but there's a really huge amount of Filipinos working overseas and all kinds of work. And it's a big source of income to the Philippines. So that's the process in getting them. Then to actually get them on the boat, maybe Ken can tell you a little bit about that. It's kind of an involved process. Yeah, so a lot of it is teamwork within the fishing community in and of itself. So a lot of times everyone, a boat will announce that, hey, we're going to go pick up crewmen based on U.S. Coast Guard regulations and what Customs and Border Protection prefers. You're allowed to pick up X number of crewmen for your own vessel. And on top of that, depending on when the boat was constructed, you can either carry up to eight additional passengers or 12 additional passengers to bring them back to Hawaii to distribute them to the different fishing vessels. So currently most of our crew pickups, we have a lot of the crew flying into American Samoa, which is about a two-week trip away from Honolulu. So the boat will head down there, pick up the crewmen, bring them back, and then upon coming into the United States, Customs and Border Protection usually meets us dockside to make sure that all the crews are vetted, all the crews are aware of their contract situations, and then they're picked up by their owners and transported to their vessels that they're going to be working on. And so as you know, the status of the crew technically is what is called detained on board. They don't have a visa, so they're not clear to enter into the state, really. But the Customs and Border Patrol people allow them free access to the piers at which you go, so they can go into our place, they can go to Nikos or PLP and buy things and visit. Very often they're visiting over on an adjacent boat with friends and that kind of thing. I think a lot of the focus or some of the focus in Martha Mendoza's AP article had to do with wages. And I'd really like the general public to sort of understand this if possible. So the crew member has a contract and the wage on the contract is usually low. It could be anywhere from $400 to $600 a month. And so the norm is that the vessel owners are paying a minimum of the crew contract and then bonuses on top of it. And it varies from vessel to vessel and I don't doubt that there may be vessel owners who are strictly paying that. So we come down to the issue of the wage and what you have to realize is these people are not admitted into the U.S. so all their money basically goes back to where they live. If you look at a situation with a regular domestic crew who say might be making $3,000 a month and you turn him loose into the Hawaiian economy, you know $3,000 a month will get you here. But you take these people who are working at these low wages and they interject their money and they make our crew members on our boats probably make at least 10 times as much as they would if they were in their native country. So when it comes down to how do you pay domestic crews? If you have domestic crews under IRS law, if you have 10 crew or less on a boat are allowed to work as an individual contractor on percentage of catch. So if I say to you, Stacy, I want to hire you on my boat, I'm going to pay you 1-1% of some adjusted number and you say yes, you're on. We go out fishing and we come back and I hand you $2.73. It's a nice day, entirely legal. And when you think about it in the long history of fishing, it's got to be that way. Because it's not as though we're going in and in the days where I know you're going to sew 250 pairs of jeans. I don't know if you're going to sew any jeans. Right, because fishing is fishing. So when we get down to the hours issue, I think whether you're a domestic crew or you're a foreign crew or you're a guy like me who's driven these boats around in the ocean before, hours, 40 hours a week, 8 hours a day, we don't know anything about that. This industry is functions and for many days crew members will be sitting there doing nothing. We get on the fish and start fishing, it's fine. So we wake up in the morning at 6 o'clock, set gear, usually takes 4 to 6 hours. They eat lunch and pack fish from the night before and probably start hauling that gear back, maybe around 6 in the evening. And it could easily take them 12 hours to get the gear back. And if there are a large amount of fish or a large amount of challenges with current moving the gear around, it's not unusual to take 15, 16 hours to get a set of gear back. You're sitting around here talking about work hours and minimum wages. The fishing industry, I don't care whether you're here, Alaska, China, the Philippines, California, that's how we work. And if you think carefully about it, that's how we have to work. And it's actually kind of similar to agriculture as well, right? I mean, you have these local people don't want to do those jobs. It's a lot of work, right? And I think to a comment about living conditions, to the best of my knowledge, the living conditions, the board, the boats are not a product of the nationality of the crew on the boat. So if I had a domestic crew, conditions are the same on my boat as if I had a foreign crew. And are they conditions that the general public would be clamoring to take a cruise with me? No? A fishing boat is a very tight, cramped place and you wouldn't want to go. Yeah, I have to agree with you there. I was with Carl Jellings on the Akulei boat. That's a day boat. I was just like, I can't believe these people do this. It's so tough. It's such hard work. And actually I'm going to end right there because we have to go to a break right now, but we'll be back in a few seconds. Hi, I'm Tyler Cevota and I was actually a guest host on Carl Campania's Think Tech Hawaii show, Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. And I think you should tune in every Wednesday to find out more about what it is. That's all. Take care. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilucas.com where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Hi, I'm Stan Energyman and I want you to be here every Friday. Noon, thinktechhawaii.com. Watch the show. Be there. I'll pay you the full weight. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is humane architecture for Hawaii and beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays at 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Okay, Aloha, we're back with Stasis to the Rescue. We're talking to two members of the Hawaii Long Line Association, Jim Cook and Kang Dang. We're talking about these very serious allegations of that AP article and these floating prisons. I'd like to point out that the boat was never named. These are very serious allegations and it's having a very real effect on you guys. That's correct. They are very serious allegations and I want you to know that we take them as serious allegations. We're not sitting there just hoping for this to go away. We don't think it'll go away. We think we need to be very active. The Hawaii Long Line Association in combination with Hawaii Seafood Committee is really doing a number of things. One of the most damning allegations was that there was slavery and human trafficking involved in the fleet. We hired a lady who has international credentials in human trafficking, slavery and extensive experience in Southeast Asia on this very subject. We asked her to help us design something to assure that this wasn't a curse. She came up with a crew contract. The crew contract is designed strictly around those human safety allegations. If the crew is willing to work on this contract and sign this contract, it's a demonstration that no human trafficking is taking place. We are trying to have in this situation and really will have a zero-tolerance situation. Without the crew identification, that is their I-95 and their passport, without signed crew contracts, you will not be allowed to unload fishing. My vision is that if there's anybody out there that has some kind of a problem, we're shortly going to find out about it through that. Furthermore, the Long Line Association has created a couple of inspection forms. One of them deals with the allegation that there are substandard conditions on vessels, that people don't have food, that people don't have water. We have a special inspection sheet and then we have in the language, whether it's Vietnamese or whatever it is, we have a questionnaire for the crew member. Our intention at this point, we're in the process of hiring a third party to go and survey all of our boats. Admittedly, at this point, it's what I'd call kind of a wide filter. What we're trying to do is get out there very, very quickly, assess all of the boats and say, okay, we don't have a problem or we do, and here are the people that we have this problem with and we intend to go to them and try to get them to remedy them. I think it will probably take us probably 30 days to get all the boats. You have to remember that these aren't big fleets of boats, these are 140 individual businesses that you're talking about. And they're out fishing and they're back and so it takes time to get things. Once we're done with that, we have been working with some of the larger retailers. And the larger retailers are really asking for us to undergo operational audits using third parties. So we have been talking to United Labs, which I think is kind of the largest certification organization in the world, and we're working with their office. And what I foresee is that within a period of about six months, we will likely be under that kind of a regime. And that kind of regime means that these people will be auditing conditions on the boats and making reports. So it's been interesting for me. I've never done this kind of work. It's like that petal in the flower and just keeps peeling pieces off of it, but we're getting it. And we're on it and it's important to us. These allegations are important to us. And so we're taking action. Can you mention a lot of your boat crews, they keep on coming back? I think, yeah, generally because they're happy and a lot of them find this as a great way to make more money than they would otherwise if they were working in their home country. So yeah, sometimes they're making up to, I don't know, eight to twelve terms as much as they would back home. So they're saving up sending their kids to college, buying a home back in their home country. And they're happy with their living conditions. And I think what's important to know is that our industry isn't free from current inspections. So for all of the boats that fish... Aren't you guys totally highly monitored compared to other countries, right? That's on the fishing sustainability standards, so responsible fishing in general. But as far as the crewmen, the foreign crewmen go, all of the boats that fish in and out of Hawaii are located within about three miles of each other between pier 16 through 18 and pier 36 through 38. So customs and border protection here locally actively monitor the crew situation. So they're doing tons of random inspections where they're making sure that all of the crew members that are supposed to be onboard are onboard and on the vessel. And then further, every time they come down, they're asking, hey, how are the living conditions? Are you getting enough food? Are you getting enough fresh water? If you need emergent medical attention, is that being provided for you? And lastly, if you want to go home, please let us know. So right after the AP article was released on September 9th, they actually had a meeting down at both of those main pairs where they gathered all of the foreign crewmen. And it was a meeting, it was kind of a forum where the owners and captains weren't allowed to attend so that the foreign crewmen can speak freely. So they re-emphasized all of these things one more time. Hey, are you getting paid according to your contract? And all those same humanitarian questions for living conditions and just making sure that they're getting enough food. And they gave them like cell phone numbers and there's already signs posted down at the pier saying that, hey, if you're subject to any kind of abuse or your appropriate living conditions aren't being provided for you, then please reach out to us and we will rectify the problem immediately. Have you heard of anything yet coming back? No, not at all. No one left? Not that I know of. Gee, so maybe. We heard us of what we're hearing back and all of the good stories. We're not going to sit here and listen to good stories. We need to uncover the truth for ourselves and we need to get into a monitoring situation and our energies are going in that direction. But it would help Bright to know which of these so-called boats are abusing Bright. You know, we're fortunate here and that pretty much 100% of the fish that's landed in Hawaii flows through United Fishing. And we're fortunate in having a business in United Fishing that's cooperating and that's where the choke point is. You're going to be a bad actor, you better figure out what you're going to do with your fish because you're not going to sell the United Fishing. Yeah, and I wanted to also re-emphasize that back when it all started, you know, the Japanese fishermen came, they were immigrants, right? You find that in fishing communities all over the country that immigrants, you know, you have on the East Coast, you know. And let's not forget that white people are also immigrants, right? A lot of Italian down in the Gulf, you got a lot of Cajuns and, you know, it's a funny business. You work really hard most of the time. You don't make that much money. Why do you keep doing it? Yeah, and people are kind of like, they're after you, too. It doesn't feel like that. I give you guys a lot of credit because I know it's a lot of work and it's very difficult. You mentioned about the observers. We carry observers on 20% of the Long Line trips for tuna and 100% of Long Line trips for swordfish. And if you look at observed Long Line trips in general, 87% of the observed Long Line trips in the Pacific are taking place on Hawaiian boats. And yet we make up less than 3% of the Long Line boats in the Pacific. Wow. So we are intensely observed. Our boats have mandatory Coast Guard inspections. There's a lot there. But nevertheless, we're not sitting on it. We're getting on it. So that's what we're up to. It sounds all very expensive, too. It is. That's a fissure I'm thinking. And the price of my pocky bowls is going to go up. Oh, gosh. Would we blame the AP for that? That's funny. Yeah, well, I don't know. Is there anything else you want to share with the public? I mean... Well, I don't know what more I can say. As we put out things, we do intend on releasing them to the public. So the public will shortly see these crew contracts so they can get an idea of what it was. And then as we get further down the line, most of these big retailers, the Sam's Clubs and Walmart and Costco's of the world, are into these social audits in countries that they go. And there are quite a few of them that are throughout the fishing industry. I expect that we'll go to that point or to some point near that. And this type of auditing will probably continue to the life of the fishery. I don't expect it to change over time. I think most of us understand that it's expensive. We know that. But we can't have bad actors in our business. Right. And I think to a large extent, you have your business and I have mine. I happen to be in the restaurant business as well. And I'd hate to see a story that was teed off on the worst restaurants in town and begin to indicate that that's the case in all of them because it's not the way that it is. So that part of Martha's article I think is somewhat unfair. Yeah. I mean, I've been to the pier. I've seen the unloading at United Fishing and the crew seemed happy. Well, you know, these are professional crew and they are with Manning agencies and they have come to the Manning agency asking for work. And I can tell you, 201, every one of them I've talked to is Hawaii is the premier place to go. And I don't think it takes much for you to imagine what crew conditions might be like on an Asian vessel operating in the Pacific. And in many cases, those are freezer vessels and the trips can be six, nine months long. And yeah, it's a different thing. We don't have any basic human rights like the United States. Yeah. Well, and on that note, we are out of time, but thank you so much, both of you, Kang and Jim, for coming in to give the fishermen side of the story and Stacey to the rescue. So, a hui hou.