Reducing Waste and Feeding Communities in Hawaiʻi with a Whole Fish Approach

Reducing Waste and Feeding Communities in Hawaiʻi with a Whole Fish Approach

0:00:01.0 John Sheehan: Food insecurity, or the lack of access to nutritious food, is a challenge for many communities, but can be especially so for islanders.

0:00:08.8 Jhana Young: You know, In Hawaii, we're 2,500 miles from the continent and we import over 90% of the food that we eat, probably about half of the seafood we eat, even though we're surrounded by the ocean, which is crazy to think about, right?

0:00:23.2 JS: And in Hawaii, food insecurity can be compounded by other environmental factors.

0:00:28.3 JY: We've identified challenges such as traceability, invasive species, and now reducing waste to increase our food security.

0:00:36.9 JS: This is Dive in with NOAA Fisheries. I'm John Sheehan and today we're going to hear about a program in Hawaii that's tackling these challenges by strengthening local connections to reduce their reliance on big global supply chains by focusing on sustainable local seafood.

0:00:53.4 JY: A lot of our partnerships are developed with and for our local communities here in Hawaii, whether it's working with traditional native Hawaiian communities in South Kona to working with communities in the seafood and culinary sectors.

0:01:09.4 JS: This is my guest, Jhana Young, the sustainable Seafood Senior manager at Conservation International-Hawaii, a partner of NOAA Fisheries and a recipient of a Saltonstall-Kennedy grant. SK grants are awarded to projects that further the promotion, development, and marketing of US Fisheries.

0:01:27.4 JY: Conservation International is a nonprofit dedicated to protecting nature in ways that benefit people in local communities all around the world. And our Hawaii program has really specialized in fostering innovative partnerships and working towards systemic changes to really make sure that we have healthy oceans, fisheries and communities across Hawaii. And it's that energy of partnership, science, policy, market-based solutions, that I'm really excited to be part of.

0:01:57.1 JS: As Jhana mentioned, one of the challenges Conservation International-Hawaii is tackling is invasive species. They can out-compete local species for resources, prey on species that don't have natural defenses against them, and can even physically alter their environments. In Hawaii, one of these invasive species is a fish called Ta'ape.

0:02:19.1 JY: Yeah, so Ta'ape is known as the bluestripe snapper and was introduced to Hawaii in the 1950s by our division of Aquatic Resources, our state agency. You know, back then they didn't really do any studies on how they would take hold and affect our local fisheries. And so when they put them in our waters in Hawaii, they didn't know that they would become so abundant and spread across our entire archipelago. And they range from, you know, 10ft deep to over 600ft deep. And because Ta'ape are invasive to Hawaii, we're trying this "eat 'em to beat 'em" approach similar to lionfish or green crab that we're seeing in other places in the US.

0:03:04.0 JS: Yeah. And by the way, these are my favorite approaches to dealing with invasive species. Let's eat them.

0:03:10.1 JY: Yeah. Ta'ape are really delicious. They're pink, white, flaky meat fish. They are reef fish, so they don't get to over £2. So they're fairly small. But you can fry them whole, you can eat them ceviche and raw style, bread 'em and fry 'em. You can put them in soups, make fish cake. So the versatility on how you prepare Ta'ape is pretty much endless.

0:03:36.3 JS: And it doesn't seem like there's a downside, if you have this abundant fish that would be really helpful for the environment if everyone ate them, why is it... What are the challenges to getting people to eat them?

0:03:48.5 JY: Yeah, so, you know, since they were introduced in the '50s, there was one effort to get people to eat them. I think it was in the '80s, and it really wasn't successful. And I think part of it is because people in Hawaii had more preference toward red or silver fish. That's kind of the cultural norm in Hawaii. And because Ta'ape is a yellow and blue fish, it kind of resembles something you might see in your aquarium rather than a fish that you would put on the dinner table. It has been known as kind of a bycatch. But more recently, fishermen are seeing the value in actually keeping them on the boat and selling them because they're aware of the market potential that Ta'ape has, and it's actually gone up in value. So people are getting more per pound for Ta'ape than they would have got 5 or 10 years ago.

0:04:42.2 JS: So what are your goals for Ta'ape? What are you looking to do with them?

0:04:46.4 JY: One of our goals is to really boost local food security. And because we import so much of our seafood here, you know, every Ta'ape that's bought and sold can help to increase that food security here that we have in our islands. Second, sustainable fishing is something that we want to promote within our fishing and our restaurant sectors. And so when we connect Ta'ape fishermen to restaurants and businesses, this helps to maintain those connections within the market and create those economic opportunities. And then third, we're helping to decrease fishing pressure on native species. So every Ta'ape caught and bought in retail or at restaurants helps to increase consumer demand, but also helps reduce that fishing pressure on our native species.

0:05:34.3 JS: Can you do anything with Ta'ape besides eat them?

0:05:38.4 JY: Yeah, so even though Ta'ape are really delicious, we also started innovating with leather. So we found that Ta'ape actually make really beautiful leather out of the fish skin waste that we're generating here in Hawaii. And we trialed about 30 species, ranging from "ahi" or tuna to Ta'ape to mahi-mahi, and really utilized all of the typically discarded skins that we're seeing in our seafood industry to create these value-added products. And in that, you can create pretty much anything that you can create with leather, from purses to wallets to fish leather earrings. And now we're exploring the potential of leather shoes.

0:06:23.6 JS: Yeah, and this goes to one of your other strategies that you sort of mentioned, which was this idea of zero waste, which is, I guess, pretty similar to something like a nose-to-tail kind of consumption, but using more parts of the fish than normally get used.

0:06:42.9 JY: Yeah, it's been one of the evolutions of our seafood program. Probably about 40 to 50 percent of the fish after it's processed is typically discarded. So we're talking about the heads, the tail cuts, the bloodline, the bones. That's typically, you know, not something that you would see on a menu in Hawaii. But because of our NOAA SK grant that we received, we really rallied together to put together this concept of a Sustainable Seafood Month campaign where we brought together chefs, fishers, fishery managers, folks all across the seafood community, to eat the lesser-known cuts and the fish. And the chefs really put an amazing spread together during last seafood month. And it was such an incredible way to show creativity, innovation, and a fun way to get our community together to support local seafood. One of my favorites, probably the whole roasted ahi tails that one of our chefs created where it was this beautiful whole cut of ahi tail that typically gets discarded. And it's just really juicy meat that almost resembles oxtail.

0:07:55.6 JY: That was a really fun dish that we celebrated.

0:08:00.0 JS: Yeah, that sounds delicious. What are some other examples of innovative approaches to Ta'ape?

0:08:04.4 JY: Yeah, I think ahi marrow dish was a really creative one. So you basically take, you know, the vertebra of ahi and you kind of hack through the vertebra to uncover the marrow within the bones. And one of the chefs served it on the half shell with a mignonette. And it was so refreshing and resembled, you know, when you throw back an oyster shooter. And that was a fun play on something that you really don't see in restaurants.

0:08:31.4 JS: That's wild. You know, obviously bone marrow being a thing, but I never... It would have never occurred to me to use ahi bone marrow. That is wild.

0:08:40.8 JY: Yeah. And it's so delicious and refreshing. Has a little bit of, you know, resemblance of the ocean, kind of like an oyster, but without... You don't have to chew anything.

0:08:50.8 JS: And it seems like you've created a really wide ranging network of local businesses, chefs, up and down the supply chain.

0:09:00.9 JY: Yeah, you know, that's probably my favorite part of doing this work is being able to work with a diversity of people. I think to date, we've probably partnered with around 200 people from chefs, to fishers, to seafood businesses, now to, folks within the leather and fashion communities. One thing that's true in our food community is that we can't do it alone. It really takes a village for us to collaborate and partner with all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds in different sectors. And that's really the key to creating solutions that last and that stick within these movements of creating long-term change within our community.

0:09:44.6 JS: How do you see the program either expanding or shifting? Do you have plans for the future?

0:09:50.8 JY: Yeah, I think this program has opened my eyes to all kinds of solutions that we can dream up. I never thought three years ago that we'd be debuting and partnering with a shoe company to make Ta'ape fish leather shoes, but here we are in 2025 doing that in a few months. In terms of working with our chefs in Hawaii, we're helping them to continually add on to these value-added product developments. So we connect fishers to restaurants and chefs and provide samples to them, whether it's ahi tail cuts or the collar meats or the bloodline or Ta'ape to chefs, and we're expanding those. We're also seeing communities in other states reach out to us to help share this model of using a market-based approach to create win-win outcomes. For example, communities in Oregon are now kind of looking at the American [0:10:51.9] ____ as an invasive species and are looking at this eat-em-to-beat-em approach to be used in Oregon. And so I think sharing this model with other communities and inspiring them to create partnerships, and creating space for collaboration is something that I would love to help out with more.

0:11:11.3 JS: Yeah. And can we go back one second? You mentioned these bloodlines, which was, I will admit, something that I thought you could not eat. It turns out you can.

0:11:22.4 JY: Yeah, so bloodline is, you know, the part of the loin that fish cutters typically trim off because most people don't like the taste of bloodline, which has a little bit more of an irony flavor and stronger flavor than the rest of the fillet. And so it's typical practice to just chuck it in the trash. One of my favorite events and activations we did was with Chef Chris Cosentino. He's actually opened up a restaurant in Maui called Coast and he did a demo with the ahi bloodline. So he brought this huge whole ahi that was caught by a local fisherman. And one of his dishes was a bloodline aioli, which was really delicious. It's all about preparation, I think. And, you know, for an amazing celebrity like Chef Cruz Cosentino, most people will just think, "Oh, just take the fillets off." But no, from a chef perspective, it's really imperative to be able to use everything and not waste it.

0:12:25.9 JS: And it's so impressive you've got a chef like Cosentino who's... He's known for that kind of cooking and for a lot of butchery and for a lot of really advanced cooking techniques. And that's awesome that he's part of the Hawaii community now.

0:12:42.5 JY: Yeah, I can share the recipe if you'd like. And the website has all of these recipes that they've created from Chef Chris's bloodline usage to the ahi tails, to using the eyeballs. Really, every part of the fish is on our website for people to learn from.

0:13:01.4 JS: We'll link to it from our website where you can learn more about Conservation International-Hawaii and their efforts to reduce waste and promote sustainability.

0:13:10.4 JY: So with our Ta'ape project that started in 2020, we've had over 22 million in our campaign reach, in addition to working with over 200 partners across Hawaii. We've also seen a really big demand in local businesses wanting to source Ta'ape. We also saw a record high of commercially landed and sold Ta'ape. We've seen a 90% increase in annual harvest of Ta'ape. We've also seen almost 178% increase in market value compared to 2018. We've also been able to track that the number of Ta'ape released back into the ocean have decreased by over 200%, which means a lot of the fishermen here in Hawaii see the value in actually keeping Ta'ape on their boats because they know that they are able to sell it.

0:14:00.6 JS: Jhana Young, thanks so much for talking with me.

0:14:02.4 JY: Yeah, thanks, John. It's been fun to talk with you and I hope you can try some recipes out in the future or maybe come to Hawaii.

0:14:10.8 JS: I agree. That sounds like a great idea.

0:14:13.9 JY: Well, take care and aloha.

0:14:16.9 JS: Jhana Young is the Sustainable Seafood Senior Manager at Conservation International-Hawaii, a partner of NOAA Fisheries, and the recipient of an SK grant, which is awarded to projects that further the promotion, development, and marketing of US fisheries. As I mentioned, you can find links to their work and learn about our other SK grant partners at fisheries.noaa.gov. I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.