Hawaii Skin Diver The Breath of Freedivers

Just checked that poster and yea it takes like 5 years to get to menpachi's L50, which is tiny, like 5 inches. Checked kumu and it was only 1.5 to get to thier L50.

The theory is, if it takes 5 years for the menpachi to colonize the hole and grow to reproductive size, you'd have to take no more than 1/5 of the fish in the hole every year. If you limit yourselves to that, and nobody else visits the hole, it should last indefinitely.

If there are other menpachi holes nearby, it's possible that other fish might move in so your impact would be less. If it's the only hole in a wide area, those are probably the only fish that will live there. Some reef fish migrate a lot, but from my experience menpachi usually stay close to home. You'll see the same fish in the same hole for years sometimes.



Aholehole are different from menpachi. For one, they grow faster - IIRC an edible size aholehole is only 2 or 3 years old. Also, they travel a lot more; unlike menpachi their holes are only temporary homes. They roam around a lot at night, and tagging experiments have shown that they can travel several miles over the course of their lives.

Wow, interesting and scary. Maybe menpachi gonna be off my list now -- maybe just shoot those occasional huge solitary ones that you see swimming around outside during the day.

Hi All,
Menpachi are usually located in an area that has more than one hole. During the night they travel around and can end up in a different menpachi hole. It depends on how close and how many holes are nearby. Even during the day, if you are plugging away, they will shoot out and make a run for it to another hole nearby. So yes, the holes replenish themselves no prob. If you got one lone menpachi hole in a barren wasteland, then it may take a lot longer to fill up again because it means other menpachi's who travel at night would have to by chance find that hole.

I think the better way to look at this whole concept is by populations not individual holes. As alawaiman said above menpachi move holes. So when we are saying there is a total number of fish we can gather to keep the population going infinitely (this is without taking many other environmental factors into consideration) we should be thinking of the population of the whole area or the group of menpachi that can normally interbreed. So if it is found that all the menpachi in an approximate 5 mile radius interact that could possibly be the population to account for. This number of fish that can be gathered sustainably is called the maximum sustainable yield in fisheries biology. The same principle can be applied to any other species, aquatic or terrestrial.

Now this is near impossible to accurately calculate unless you want to go be a marine biologist count fish so being an aware diver is just the way to go. If you notice there isn't very much fish at a spot...let um swim so that those there may help build the population. No sense pounding the two menpachi in a random hole in the middle of no where. Let um live and maybe there will be more in that area in years to come.