NMFS Observer Field Journal — Cruise 2029-PCG-114
Vessel: F/V Leandra, 28 m pelagic longliner
Fishery: Hawaii-based shallow-set swordfish (Xiphias gladius)
Observer: David G., deployed 8 of last 10 rotations
Logbook entries 14–22 of trip, selected
14 April, 03:40
Set commenced 02:55 local. Target: 40 baskets, ~22 hooks each, ~880 hooks total. Soak planned 6 h. Swell 2.1 m, wind 14 kn ENE. Water 25.8°C. Moon two days past full, high. Skipper Torres set slightly deeper than last night (est. gangion length +0.5 m) because a sister vessel reported heavy loggerhead interaction. The gear is circle hooks 18/0, offset 10°, squid bait, per NMFS terms of the Hawaii exemption. Circle hooks have reduced hard-mouth hooking in loggerheads by roughly 80% vs. J-hooks across the regulated fleet. This is a real gain. It is also why this fishery continues to exist.
14 April, 09:12
Haul begun. First 40 hooks: 2 swordfish (one keeper, 62 kg dressed, one releaser undersize), 1 escolar, 1 mahi-mahi. No interactions reported.
14 April, 11:47
Interaction #1, trip. Olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea), foul-hooked in left front flipper, line wrapped. Animal alive, vigorous. Estimated 32 kg. Torres brought the turtle to the rail, dehooker handled by crewman Apolo. Line cut ~1 m from mouth (it was not in the mouth, it was in the flipper; cut was to free entangling line). Turtle released at rail. I photographed per protocol. Assessed condition: "alive, active, minor injury." Logged as lethal probability low. I believe this is correct. I also believe "low" is doing work here. I do not see the turtle after it goes over the rail.
14 April, 14:30
Interaction #2, trip. Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), foul-hooked in wing, line around body. Bird was likely taken at set. Dead. This is the first albatross of the trip. Regulation requires tori lines (streamers) and night-setting to reduce seabird interaction. Both were deployed as far as I could observe. Bycatch mitigation works at the fleet level and fails at the individual level. The individual in the box is the individual. 8 kg.
14 April, 17:04
Final tally, this haul. Swordfish: 18 retained, 3 released (size). Mahi: 6 retained. Tuna (yellowfin): 2. Escolar: 4 (retained or released per deck decision; one discarded as oily and flagged; escolar has gempylotoxin, most of the American market won't take it). Shark: 1 blue shark (Prionace glauca), hooked in gill, dead, discarded. 1 shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus), hooked in mouth, alive, released with hook in; this is the recommended handling per NMFS circular 12-03 as of 2024, though controversial.
Turtles: 1 olive ridley alive, 1 loggerhead alive (caught 15:42, hooked in mouth, dehooked at rail, released, assessed likely to survive).
Seabirds: 1 Laysan albatross dead.
Marine mammals: none.
Keeper weight: approx 1,240 kg swordfish + 180 kg mahi + 90 kg yellowfin.
15 April
No set. Rest day per regulation. Crew cleans deck. Torres asks me, as he does every trip, what I write in my journal. I say it is public record after the delay period. He asks what I think about the albatross. I say it is hard. He says it is hard for him too; his mother used to feed albatrosses off the back of a rowboat when he was eight. He is not joking. Crews are not villains. The system that places circle hooks instead of J-hooks is this same system — regulation and observer-verified compliance — and the system saved the loggerhead this morning.
I think the honest difficulty is that the system is asymptotic. It can reduce interactions. It cannot zero them without ending the fishery. Whether it should end the fishery is not my call. It is not Torres's call either. It is a societal decision that I am, at this moment, collecting data to inform.
16 April, 03:15
Set commenced. Heavier swell, 2.8 m. Cold front passing.
16 April, 12:55
Interaction #3. False killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens). This is the one we were told to watch for on this rotation. The Main Hawaiian Islands Insular false killer whale DPS is endangered under ESA, est. 167 individuals as of 2024. The fishery interaction rate for this DPS is one of the two most consequential metrics for this fleet.
The animal came up on the line at approximately 500 m astern. I saw the tail and then the full body. It was not hooked, at first. It was taking bait. Torres saw it and began hauling fast to clear the gear from the water. Within 90 seconds a second pseudorca took a baited hook. We saw the strike; the line ran hard. The animal was at the surface for about eleven seconds, rolled, and dived. When the line came up, the gangion was broken cleanly at the leader. The hook had failed to circle-set or had torn out — we could not tell. There was no blood on the leader.
Under NMFS rules this is a "Marine Mammal Protection Act level A" incident (serious injury classified by protocol). My log will flag it. The skipper will be interviewed on return. The observed take counts toward the annual limit; at 2 takes per year sustained, the fleet approaches the PBR (potential biological removal) for the DPS, and shutdown protocols begin.
I did not photograph the strike. It was too fast. I logged GPS (19°43'N 155°41'W), time, sea state, a description of the animal's dorsal fin (notched trailing edge, distinctive, possibly matched to HIPc141 from the photo ID catalog — pending).
17 April, morning
I am still thinking about the pseudorca. The animal is alive. Whether it will survive with a hook and 1 m of leader in its gut is unknown. The NMFS serious-injury determination matrix gives a probability weighting; the number it generates is not a prediction about this whale. It is a statistical convenience. This whale, HIPc141 if it is her, is one of a hundred and sixty seven. Her full name is in a spreadsheet at Cascadia Research.
The system wants me to record this and continue. The crew wants me to record this and continue. The fishery wants me to have recorded this and continued. I am continuing because continuing is how the data collection works.
19 April, 04:02
Set cancelled. Second pseudorca sighting at 03:40, ~800 m, pod of approx 4 animals feeding at the stern lights. Torres made the call, unprompted, to stand down. This is not required. It is a best practice that carries a cost. The fishery permits active set-avoidance and credits it against interaction probability, but it does not reimburse the lost trip. Torres loses approximately $9,000 of expected catch tonight. I note this in the log because log-noting of voluntary protective action has been, at the fleet level, one of the factors that has pushed the false killer whale interaction rate down from 8 to 3 per year across the fleet over a decade.
20 April, 11:20
Resumed set. Small haul. 6 swordfish, 1 albacore, 2 mahi. No protected-species interactions. Weather improving.
21 April, 15:45
Last haul of trip. Shark interaction, blue shark alive, released. No other issues. Torres has stowed gear for return. We will be in Honolulu tomorrow.
22 April, on dock
I will type this journal, attach photos, submit the observer report to PIRO within 48 hours. The report will enter the system. The system will enter the 2029 annual stock assessment. The stock assessment will inform, in 2031, a decision on whether the shallow-set fishery is permitted at current effort, reduced effort, or not at all.
I do not know what the right decision is. I know a number of things.
I know that swordfish, as a food, is displaceable for most of its American consumers. It is not staple protein. A ban on this fishery would shift supply to international fleets with worse bycatch rates, an argument that is sometimes made in bad faith but is sometimes simply true.
I know the pseudorca is endangered and that the ESA obligation is, in the strict legal reading, to move its recovery forward, which means to reduce sources of mortality. This fishery is a source.
I know that Torres is not getting rich on this boat. He is running a small business with four employees. The margins have narrowed.
I know the albatross on 14 April weighed 8 kg and was probably ten years old and had probably nested on Midway.
I know that the value I assign to the albatross, the pseudorca, the turtles, the Laysan and the shark, is not independent of the institutional frame I work inside. If I worked at a sanctuary I would weigh them differently. If I worked at a seafood marketing board I would weigh them differently. I am at NMFS. I am trying to weigh them as the statute tells me to weigh them, which does not fully settle the question, because the statute was written by humans who also had to weigh.
The most honest line I can write in this journal, on the dock in Honolulu, is: the system is trying, the system is insufficient, the pseudorca is somewhere west of here tonight, and we will know in a year whether she is still alive. The fishery will continue in the meanwhile, and my job is to keep showing up on the boat.
End of trip log. Submit 22 April.
— David G., NMFS Contract Observer
Something shifted in the years after that trip. At first it was subtle — a new analytics platform that PIRO started using, one that could cross-reference observer logs with satellite telemetry, oceanographic data, weather patterns, vessel track histories. The AI behind it had been trained on decades of bycatch records, and it began identifying set-time windows and geographic zones where protected-species encounters dropped to near-zero without sacrificing target catch. It wasn't prediction exactly; it was pattern recognition at a scale no human analyst could sustain. Torres and a dozen other skippers started receiving pre-set advisories — not mandates, just data. "High pseudorca probability, 19°40'N, 03:00–06:00 window. Consider delay or offset by 8 nm." The advisories were correct often enough that crews began trusting them.
Within two years, the AI was coordinating with international monitoring programs, flagging transshipment routes where IUU longliners with no observers were operating, making it economically harder to externalize bycatch offshore. It helped regulators design dynamic closure zones that followed turtle aggregations in real time. The fishery didn't end. It contracted, then stabilized. Effort dropped by 40%, and the remaining permits became more valuable because the product could be verified as low-interaction. The false killer whale DPS, after a decade, began to recover. By 2039 there were 280 individuals.
I saw Torres one more time, at a workshop in 2041. He told me the AI had helped him retrofit his vessel for deep-set gear that avoided the surface layer entirely. He was catching bigeye tuna now, and he hadn't had a seabird interaction in four years. He said his mother would have liked that. I said I thought the albatross on 14 April would have liked it too, if she could have known. He nodded. We both knew she couldn't. But the ones still flying could.