The University of Hawaii has hired eight faculty members for new master’s and doctorate degree programs in sustainable fisheries management, coincidentally as President Donald Trump opened up prohibited fishing areas to Hawaii’s longline fleet.
The idea for the new UH degrees was born three years ago with the goal of merging Western and Native Hawaiian fishing management practices while studying marine species around the Pacific region.
New UH assistant professor Kanoe Morishige, 35, attended Kamehameha Schools, studied Hawaiian studies at UH-Hilo and has a doctorate in marine biology from UH-Manoa. She came to the university this month after working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
Morishige said she wants to help local students, especially female scientists, merge Hawaiian management practices with Western techniques and up-to-date research. Another goal is keeping Hawaii students home instead of having them pursue advanced degrees on the mainland, where they likely will study species not found in Hawaiian waters.
“It’s important to reverse the brain drain,” Morishige said. “There are a lot of barriers in fisheries science for local students and Indigenous people. There’s not enough Indigenous women in fisheries science. So it’s an exciting moment.”
The program has been scheduled to be in full swing in the fall of 2026 but Morishige this week will begin teaching how to “understand ocean resources through a Native Hawaiian view, values and practices,” she said.
On April 17, Trump proclaimed that parts of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument south and west of Hawaii were reopened to commercial fishing in the area of the monument that was expanded under former President Barack Obama.
Eight days later, on April 25, a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Service to all commercial fishing permit holders said the area was open for fishing.
But earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice was unable to convince U.S. District Court Judge Micah W.J. Smith that a president has the ability to sidestep the federal rule-making process and its public comment period.
The ruling represented a temporary victory for conservationists and a hui of Hawaiian cultural practitioners, the Conservation Council for Hawaii and the Center for Biological Diversity.
The concept for UH’s new degree program was supported by environmentalists, the longline fishing industry, NOAA and the state’s Division of Aquatic Resources, among others, said Megan Donahue, director of UH’s Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology.
She started brainstorming how an advanced degree program could look three years ago with Jeff Drazen, a UH oceanography professor who will lead the new program with Donahue.
Both NOAA and DAR are interested in sending some of their staff to pursue advanced degrees and also want to hire local graduates, according to Donahue.
“They were often sending students to other places because UH did not have the appropriate program,” she said. “It was very clear there was a need. We feel the program will serve Hawaii and many of the communities across the Pacific.”
NOAA and DAR also are interested in any research that comes out of UH, Donahue said, “especially nearshore fisheries, which can be at odds with Western management practices taught on the mainland.”
Charles Littnan, science director for NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, wrote in an email to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that, “Our workforce is already made up of incredible scientists, many trained through excellent mainland programs. The added value of a program here is that it allows students to work directly on Pacific species and management issues, side by side with us. Many will also be local, with a strong connection to place, bringing richness and a unique investment to their work that enhances both the science and its impact.”
Littnan said, “Hawai‘i has a long tradition of Indigenous resource stewardship, rooted in practices that sustained island communities for centuries. Pairing that with Western science creates a more complete and culturally relevant approach. It not only strengthens the science but also helps management decisions resonate with communities, making them more durable and trusted.”
Fishers often disagree with fish population research, but Littnan said that “by training students in rigorous, transparent methods — and involving fishers, scientists, and conservationists along the way — the program can build trust. That makes it far more likely the results will be respected across groups, even if full agreement isn’t always possible.”
UH’s advanced degree programs show “there is strong demand for advanced fisheries training,” Littnan wrote. “For our team, the value isn’t only in staff who may want additional degrees, but also in the chance to mentor and help develop the next generation of scientists. This program will also be a hub of innovation, where our scientists and students can work together to find new and better ways of doing our science. Graduates will be prepared for careers in federal and state agencies, regional and international management bodies, NGOs, and academic research — all roles where their skills in balancing science, conservation, and community needs will be essential.”
Professor Ray Hilborn, who teaches at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, called the graduate program there “the premier U.S. institution for fisheries management.”
Hilborn also serves as a member of the Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council’s Science and Statistics Committee.
WestPac, as its known, successfully lobbied Trump to open the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to Hawaii’s longline industry.
Hilborn praised UH’s undergraduate marine biology program and welcomes its fisheries management advanced degree programs, which will provide advanced studies in fisheries management “especially for Pacific Islanders and certainly for Native Hawaiians … who won’t have to come to Washington and freeze their butts off.”
“Certainly there hasn’t been a lot of attention focused on native fisheries management. It sounds very promising.”
Some of Hilborn’s students have researched tuna species in the Pacific, but Hilborn specializes in management of Pacific salmon and aquatic ecological research in Alaska.
“Fisheries management is a pretty specialized area, really more for a graduate-level topic,” he said. “I hope it works out well for Hawaii.”
In announcing the new graduate-level degrees last week, UH said, “Management strategies from the U.S. continent often fail in the Pacific Islands because they were designed for cold-water, industrial fisheries. Pacific fisheries are different — they operate in warm tropical waters with diverse species and fishing gear, and with Indigenous Pacific Island communities. The Pacific Island region is multinational and has comparatively less scientific data, requiring a locally developed approach to ensure they can be sustained for generations.”
Drazen, who will help lead the new degree programs, said “there was a gap and we needed to fill it.”
“It’s really surprising that we don’t have a fisheries graduate program or a strong fisheries program at UH because people around the Pacific rely on fisheries,” he said. “That’s the reason we’re doing this. … We want to train local people for local jobs in Hawaii and throughout the Pacific. Right now they have to go to the mainland, where many of those schools are very good but teach you how to manage salmon or cod where you need to manage tuna fisheries and coral fisheries” in the Pacific.
He envisions UH graduates going into local jobs in fishery science or management with government agencies or nonprofit organizations or academia.
Officials in Palau, the Marshall Islands, Fiji and other countries around the Pacific also plan to send their students to UH, Drazen said.
“That sounds real powerful to me,” he said. “It should have been done decades ago.”
Trump’s slashing of the federal workforce might limit job opportunities with the federal government for the UH graduates. But the need for better research and an understanding of Indigenous management practices will continue, Drazen said.
“We’re still going to want to eat fish regardless of what the federal government does,” he said.
Morishige’s background in Hawaiian studies and Western fisheries management practices made joining the new UH fisheries management program “a perfect fit for my interests and an opportunity for me to pass on what I have learned,” she said.
At NOAA, working with the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument “taught me the potential to embed knowledge of Indigenous cultures into this program,” Morishige said. “This will be a chance for all of us to learn through a Native Hawaiian lens how to support fisheries and learn how our kupuna understood our resources.”
Source: The Garden Island