About 40 people attended Wednesday evening’s meeting, the first of four scheduled in Maui County, at the Kihei Youth Center. Some testifiers expressed support for the sanctuary’s mission to protect humpback whales and for widening its scope to include other species, such as dolphins, monk seals and sea turtles; but others spoke against the sanctuary, including one person who called for the end of the 22-year-old refuge for whales covering 1,370 square miles of state and federal waters in Hawaii.

“The sanctuary should go away,” said Basil Oshiro, president of the Maui Cooperative Fishing Association and the Kula representative for Aha Moku o Maui. “We oppose/reject all of the (revised plan) alternatives on the grounds that the humpback whale in Hawaii . . . is no longer endangered. The single-species sanctuary should go away for that reason.”

On April 20, NOAA proposed removing the Hawaii population of humpback whales from the endangered species list. The whales have received endangered species protection since 1970, four years after the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling.

Some conservationists have suggested that delisting the whales may be premature. However, NOAA officials said conservation efforts have paid off and whale populations have been healthy and growing at steady rates.

If the NOAA proposal is adopted, whales in Hawaii would be listed as threatened, not endangered, but they still would continue to be protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Public comments on delisting the whales are due July 20.

The state of Alaska filed a petition to remove some North Pacific humpback whales from protection under the Endangered Species Act last year. That population, estimated at more than 5,800, feeds in Alaska in the summer and breeds in Hawaii in winter.

In other testimony Tuesday, Oshiro said that the sanctuary’s conservation work is duplicated by other groups and agencies, including the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Aquatic Resources and the Aha Moku councils, which serve as an advisory body to the DLNR.

“The sanctuary should not be given any new regulatory powers,” Oshiro said in written testimony. The sanctuary is “ill-equipped to implement any regulations or permitting authority and duplicates other federal agencies and state agencies that already have powers to do what is being proposed.”

He suggested that new rules for approaching humpback whales should be integrated into the Marine Mammal Protection Act, rather than into the Hawaiian Islands sanctuary.

The federal mammal conservation law “is well understood and has stood the test of time,” Oshiro said. “Any new rules should be placed in existing law, rather than giving it to a new entity, such as the sanctuary.”

Ke’eaumoku Kapu, chief executive officer of Aha Moku o Maui, also spoke against the sanctuary’s proposal.

“I question the process,” he said, maintaining that the plan was drafted from top-down, rather than from “bottom to top” and “that kind of turned things sour.”

He questioned whether the plan’s draft was to create jobs for scientists or even expand federal authority and make way for “military occupation.”

Speaking on behalf of the DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources, aquatic biologist Skippy Hau said that the state was proud of the sanctuary’s accomplishments, particularly its public education programs and its work to disentangle whales snared in fishing lines.

But Hau emphasized that the state is not a sponsor of the sanctuary’s revised management plan, and that the state was conducting its own evaluation and review of the proposal to increase federal jurisdiction over Hawaiian waters.

Commercial fisherman Lane Nakagawa testified that he was “very wary, very untrusting” about the growth of the sanctuary and the extent to which it could interfere with fishermen.

He noted that “we have to live under these rules.”

For example, he said it was unclear how the sanctuary’s proposed prohibition against altering submerged lands might affect fishermen.

Out on the ocean as much as 48 hours at a time, Nakagawa said he often sees whale-watching tour boats maneuvering to get visitors close to whales, adding that, to him, it appears to be like “Animal Planet” or “Whale Wars.”

“When I’m out on the ocean, all I see is people chasing these things around,” he said.

Fishermen do their best to stay clear of the whales, he said.

He suggested that the current 100-yard approach limit be expanded to 200 or 400 yards.

Sanctuary Superintendent Malia Chow spoke at length at the opening of the meeting about how the sanctuary was in the process of soliciting broad and diverse public comments on the proposed plan.

“We’d like to hear from the public whether we’ve got it right,” she said.

Under the proposal, no areas of the sanctuary would be closed off, and there would be no regulation of fishing, she said.

A five-year review of the sanctuary’s management plans began in 2010 and took in nearly 12,600 comments as it was drafting its revised plan. That plan is undergoing a review process for its environmental impact statement.

The proposed rule includes a boundary expansion that adds more than 230 square miles of state and federal waters around Oahu, Kauai and Niihau, bringing the total sanctuary area to 1,600 square miles. The revision also calls for changing the sanctuary’s name to the Hawaiian Islands National Marine Sanctuary Na Kai ‘Ewalu.

In 2012, during the process to review the sanctuary’s management plan, the sanctuary advisory council’s working groups determined that while humpback whales remain the centerpiece of sanctuary protection, there’s a need for a more “integrated approach to marine resource management,” according to the sanctuary. The revised plan is an “ecosystem-based management approach” backed by science and consistent with the traditional Hawaiian approach to managing natural and cultural resources.

Another meeting was held Thursday evening in Lahaina. And it will be followed with a session from 4 to 6:30 p.m. today at the Lanikeha Community Center in Kaunakakai and a final Maui County session from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday at Lanai High and Elementary School.

Public comments are due June 19. Following the public comment period, a final management plan and environmental impact statement will be prepared through a public process under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The sanctuary is administered by a partnership of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. The sanctuary includes warm ocean waters less than 600 feet deep and surrounding the main Hawaiian Islands.

* Brian Perry can be reached at bperry@mauinews.com.