Off the coast of Hawai‘i, an unwelcome guest crowds the waters, devouring creatures that cross its path.
How to stop them?
A new effort wants to put them on your feet.
Measuring barely a foot long (30 centimeters), lemon yellow with electric-blue stripes, ta’ape doesn’t look like much of a threat, yet it travels in the thousands, a moving wall of fish in Hawai‘i’s waters.
For decades, the invasive species has feasted on native fish — and fishermen’s wallets.
Now, Conservation International-Hawai‘i and P448, a luxury Italian shoe brand, have teamed up to tackle the issue — creating a shoe that uses ta’ape fish leather in the design.
While fish leather has found its way into the fashion world, this is new territory for ta’ape, said Jhana Young, who leads Conservation International’s work on the project in Hawai‘i.
“Rewiring how we think about invasive species and turning them into leather flips the script and helps protect our reefs and uplift local communities,” she said. “This is the kind of creative strategy we need in the conservation world now.”
Invasive species are a scourge the world over, but Hawai‘i holds a bleak distinction: It is known as the invasive species capital of the world. More than 5,000 non-native plants and animals cost the state tens of millions of dollars each year.
With 10 million annual visitors to Hawai‘i, invasive species can arrive to the islands in a host of ways, from the ballast water of ships to the wheel wells of airplanes. They also arrive through imported goods like Christmas trees.
Others, like ta’ape, were purposefully introduced. Back in the 1950s, the state government brought them to O’ahu from the South Pacific as part of an effort to bolster local fisheries. Ta’ape, which thrives in a range of different marine environments, from shallow reefs to deepwater, and has no natural predators in Hawai‘i, quickly exploded in number.
Fishing is the best way to eliminate the species, Young said, which means it has to be a profitable and worthwhile endeavor for fishermen to target ta’ape.
Last summer, P448 sourced 2,000 ta’ape skins from fishermen on the island of Moloka’i for the collection — the first time ta’ape skins have been tanned at a commercial scale. Those skins have since been transformed into nearly 900 pairs of shoes.
Preparing the fish skins for leather-making is a delicate process, said Young. In the heat and humidity of Hawai‘i, there’s a limited time window for exposing the skins to the elements before the quality begins to drop.
Leather-making is typically an environmentally damaging process, using toxic chemicals like chromium and massive amounts of water. Aquaborne, the tannery company processing the ta’ape, uses eco-friendly materials and processes, including no heavy metal or chromium use, and 80 percent less water and energy compared with traditional tanning processes.
“Leather is a widely used textile, but it comes at a steep environmental cost,” Young said. “Fish leather can be a more sustainable alternative and due to its crosshatched fiber structure, it’s actually stronger than cow leather when you compare it by thickness.”
This shoe collection builds on years of hard work to combat ta’ape destruction in Hawai‘i, Young said.
Since 2019, Conservation International-Hawai‘i has partnered with local nonprofit Chef Hui to work with fishermen, chefs and influencers to encourage people to eat ta’ape. Once known as a rubbish fish, the effort set out to change perspectives and persuade people to see ta’ape as an opportunity, rather than a burden.
“Thankfully, they taste really good,” Young said. “Chefs in Hawai‘i have really embraced it and helped put it on the map as a great fish to eat.”
Since the program started, annual harvests of ta’ape have increased 90 percent, its market value has increased by 168 percent, and the amount of ta’ape released back into the ocean has dropped by more than 200 percent — which means fishermen are increasingly seeing their value.
With the shoe collection, the program reached a new milestone — now, every part of ta’ape can be used.
After the skins are removed, the meat is donated to local families and to people in need in the community. The fish bones are then used on a local farm, and the remainder of the fish is donated to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study the life cycle of ta’ape.
“The shoe collection is really a culmination of everything that we’ve built over more than a decade,” Young said. “Not only can we eat them to beat them, we can wear them and apply this idea of using an invasive species for the benefit of our society. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The ta’ape shoes are available for purchase here.
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Mary Kate McCoy is a staff writer at Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates. Also, please consider supporting our critical work.
