How do Kapu, Conservation and Fish Life Cycles connect?
Hawaiians used the kapu system to conserve fish by preventing overfishing. There were areas that were kapu for fishing as well as certain fish that were kapu during certain times of the year; usually when they were reproducing.
Hawaiians had to know a lot about the life cycles of fish to know when they were reproducing and when the fish should be kapu.
In order to prevent overfishing today, we can limit the fish we take and time our fishing and eating of fish to the life cycles of fish.
We can apply lessons from the past to mālama i ke kai today.
Connecting Kapu and Conservation
I hope you learned a lot about how to mālama i ke kai.
Now you know how Hawaiians used kapu to make sure that there were plenty of fish in the ocean. You also know that fish reproduce at certain times of the year. If we leave fish in the ocean and give them a chance to reproduce there will be more fish.
I hope that you use all that you have learned to help to conserve fish in the ocean so that there are lots of fish in the future.