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Noncommercial fishing for ulua, which rates among the most prized game fish in Hawaii, is popular but notably difficult.
Catching the nocturnal, predatory jack can be somewhat of a rite of passage. Hawaii Fishing News, the record-keeper for the largest fish caught in the state, maintains a dedicated and growing list called the 100-Plus Club to immortalize anyone who has managed to catch an ulua that weighs more than 100 pounds.
While fishing drones can serve as an effective tech tool for catching ulua, the battery-powered, bait-dropping device is prompting some environmental and public-safety concerns.
Experienced anglers have learned to cast their fishing lines far from shore, where they are more likely to encounter the ulua. For decades, that included swimming or paddling the line out on a surfboard, kayak or boat. Even plastic bags have been used to float fishing lines farther out, according to Dean Sensui, a longtime fisher and executive producer of the local TV show “Hawaii Goes Fishing.”
“Setting bait out real far is nothing new,” Sensui said. “People have been doing it in all kinds of ways.”
Drones — fitted with tiny propellers that can be controlled from a distance of about a half-mile — are the latest vehicle some ulua fishers use to send lines farther from shore.
Unassisted, fishers might be able to cast lines as far as 100-150 yards, Sensui said. Since about the last decade, and increasingly so over the past handful of years, drones have been used to carry closer to 1,000-1,500 yards’ worth of fishing line into the ocean.
Some longtime ulua fishing setups are recognizable because they feature floating plastic jugs, which are attached to fishing lines in an effort to keep baited hooks high in the water and away from reefs, where animals like sharks might try to take the bait for themselves.
But pushing out farther into the waters with longer fishing lines and jugs can increase the odds of lines getting snagged, cut and left out in the water, and more passing oceangoers, marine animals and vessels getting tangled up in them.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources is compiling reports of boat propellers and ocean users who encounter lines far from shore. The department provided the Honolulu Star-Advertiser with about a dozen reports it has received about drone fishing dating back to 2019.
Among the reports, in March a surfer at Kaiser Bowls on Oahu reported having a finger “snagged by a fishing line,” citing concerns about fishing lines being dropped by drones beyond the surf break.
In another incident a DLNR Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement officer reported being clotheslined by a fishing line about 400 yards from shore while patrolling the water on a Jet Ski.
In that case, the officer said, “The monofilament line extended from a fishing pole on the beach to a bottle floating and anchored about 500 yards offshore. If this line had caught my neck (instead of chest), I could have been seriously injured.” The officer added that flying fishing gear that far out is a “danger to ocean-users.”
In another case, a presumed boater reported routinely spotting abandoned lines and jugs hundreds of yards from shore.
“It is a real boating hazard and lots of dead animals, like shark and ulua, found on floating jugs! Every week I see … jugs with tons of line 400-600 yards off shore — and people get lines tangled in their (propellers) that far out!” the written complaint stated.
However, stray fishing lines from drones do not appear to be on the radar of the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Hawaii Marine Animal Response. While all said they’re familiar with drone fishing, none pegged it as a significant concern.
There isn’t much data on the amount of gear being left in Hawaii waters, but the frequency at which drone fishers need to replace their gear could serve as an indicator of how often lines are lost.
“We have customers we might see once a week, twice a week … to refill their lines,” said Kai Terayama, owner of Nanko Fishing Supply in Kaneohe. “They probably lost all that line, and who’s to say they’re retrieving it?” He added, “It’s a lot more frequent than guys who are casting. I still have … line from two years ago.”
While it’s unclear how many drone fishers there are in the islands, Terayama estimated that about half of the ulua fishers his store sees use drones.
Various types of recreation-focused drone use appear to be on the rise in Hawaii. Data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows that there were about 15,400 registry enrollments and registrants for drones in the state in 2019 and 21,000 in 2020. Through three quarters of 2021, there were 20,200 enrollments and registrations for drones.
The drone fishing trend has touched off calls for regulation.
State legislators — such as Rep. Lisa Marten, whose district covers Kailua and Waimanalo, and Sen. Gil Riviere, who represents Oahu’s North Shore and much of the Windward part of the island — have shown interest in introducing a drone fishing bill in response to drone use in their districts.
Marten, who wants to ban drone fishing while protecting other forms of fishing, said, “You can be very specific about what you don’t allow.”
In sizing up a time frame for imposing regulation, she said, “In some ways it’s easier to nip it in the bud than to let it get really popular and have all these fishermen invest in drones and then tell them they can’t use them.”
Within the local fishing community, drone fishing gets mixed reviews.
“When I go diving nowadays … I will find all this dead line and even jugs in the water. … It’s so many hundreds of yards of line, and it’s getting tangled in the reef, affecting the coral life,” said Oahu resident Devan Chock, an avid fisher and diver.
A video Chock posted on the Ulua Fishing Hawaii page on Facebook in April, which showed an empty plastic jug bobbing on the ocean surface near Kaena Point State Park, drew impassioned responses, many of which opposed the use of drones.
Some of the comments suggested that drone fishing is “cheating” and that it takes the sport out of ulua fishing. And some local ulua fishing tournaments have banned the use of drones. But Hawaii Fishing News Executive Publisher Carrie Johnston stands by a decision to include them.
“We do understand the concern … but we recognize that catching a 100- plus-pound ulua is something that is an accomplishment no matter what method you use. It’s a remarkable achievement,” Johnston said.
Maui resident Lee Alameda said drones serve as a helpful tool in fishing. “Nobody can cast 200 yards; I can drop my drone 500 yards, if I wanted to,” Alameda said. “It’s really opened up what we can do as ulua fishermen.”
He added that he comes back to retrieve any gear he had to leave behind and said there’s no excuse not to.
Bill Newton, owner of fishing supply shop Ewa Beach Buy and Sell, said drone fishing is marred by “irresponsible fishermen who, at the end of a fishing session, will bring their line in and something will break off, and they will leave their jugs out in the water,” disregarding the hazards of abandoning fishing gear in the ocean.
Newton, who distributes stickers that read, “Only scrubs leave their jugs,” said he supports responsible drone fishing practices, which a majority of drone users appear to be aligned with. And he’s wary of the call for drone regulation.
“It’s every style of fishing — you do something that somebody can say is wrong, somebody can say is not good for the environment, somebody can say is overfishing,” Newton said. “If you open that door and say, ‘Hey, we need somebody to come in here and make some rules,’ basically it’s going to leave it open for people to come in and shut down other styles of fishing.”
Sensui said lawmakers and others should develop a clear picture of drone fishing before attempting to regulate it.
“You’re gonna end up advocating for regulations that you realize, after the fact, will limit what you can do as a fisherman,” he said. “The No. 1 thing you’ve got to do before you make any kind of regulation is you have to find out if there’s really a problem there.”