Kona’s international billfish tourney canceled for 2026, but organizers hope it will be back

In the 1960s, while fishing in the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament, deckhand Rick Gaffney and other anglers aboard the competing boats would search and search and search the vast Pacific Ocean “looking for signs of fish, bait fish and seabirds.”

It could be hours of boredom as they cruised up and down the Kona Coast without any action.

“And then, all of a sudden, the reel can go off and everybody’s on their feet, their hearts pumping,” Gaffney said. “The sound of a fishing reel will wake up any fisherman out of probably dead sleep.”

The goal was to hook a billfish species — Pacific blue marlin, black marlin, striped marlin or shortbill spearfish. There also was a prize for the largest yellowfin tuna (ahi).

The Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament started in 1959, luring anglers from around the world to fish off the Kona Coast from Hawai‘i Island’s northernmost point, Upolu, to its southernmost, Kalae Point, over the course of five 8-hour days each summer.

But this year, the tournament — one of the oldest and most prestigious sportfishing events in the world, in which the anglers competed for coveted titles and prizes while promoting marine conservation and sustainable fishing practices  — has been canceled.

Tournament Director Bobbie Fithian explained why: “Ongoing shifts in international travel patterns, rising operational and transportation costs, and continued uncertainty in the world have made it difficult to ensure the strong international field that has long defined the tournament’s legacy.”

During the planning process for the tournament this year, Fithian said it became clear that the current global and economic conditions presented significant challenges in relaunching the tournament that for decades had lured teams to compete from many faraway places, including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Palau and the U.S. mainland.

It’s now been two years since this once-illustrious event has been in Kona. Since then, the cost of everything associated with the tournament had gone up, including airline fares, hotel rooms, charter boat fees and diesel fuel.

But Fithian, who took over as tournament director when her husband Peter passed away in 2025, and her associates still hopes to bring the tournament back.

“It’s important to me because it was so much a part of his (Peter’s) life,” she said.

Gaffney described this year’s cancellation of the tournament as a bump in the road, but acknowledged: “It’s quite possible we could lose it forever.”

The tournament got its “first nick in the armor” when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, forcing large events to be canceled to avoid an outbreak of the virus. The Ironman World Championship and the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival, two other large international events held on the Big Island, were also canceled that year.

“It’s never fully recovered from that downtime,” Gaffney said.

Now with the current war in Iran, fuel costs are driving the prices for everything up.

According to the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization’s second quarter forecast for 2026, the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran has led to the biggest disruption in global oil flows in half a century and skyrocketing oil prices.

The report states that the average price for a gallon of jet fuel reached $4.90 in early April, up from $2.50 just before the conflict.

“This near-doubling has pushed fuel’s share of operating expenses to nearly 45% for some airlines in a matter of weeks,” the report states.

Additionally, gasoline stood at $5.66 per gallon statewide as of last week, with diesel that runs most boats costing about $7 per gallon.

Gaffney said the cost of fuel varies substantially based on the size of the boat and its engines, noting a smaller boat with a 350-gallon tank could cost $2,000 to fill up.

Because of the uncertainty with the war, with nobody knowing how much longer it will continue and when gas prices will stop climbing, Gaffney said Fithian wasn’t able to tell potential participants what the cost to charter a boat would be for this year’s tournament.

Gaffney said the tournament can not return to the Big Island until the fuel issue has stabilized.

In recent years, the tournament also has struggled with attracting enough volunteers. Gaffney attributes this to life getting busier in general, and a lack of volunteerism overall.

Participation among fishermen also has dwindled. Fithian said younger anglers are more interested in fishing for cash prizes over trophies.

But Gaffney thinks interest in the tournament is still strong, with memories of the event still echoing throughout Kona, including a 1,000-pound taxidermy marlin caught during one of the past tournaments that once hung at the King Kamehameha Beach Hotel and now is on display at the Royal Kona Resort.

“I do know that some of the anglers who would have fished the HIBT this year are still coming, because they can’t live without fishing in Kona for a week,” Gaffney said. “It’s part of their DNA.”

After college and a stint in the Navy, Gaffney returned to Hawaiʻi and ran a charter boat on Maui. He would bring it over to the Big Island every summer and serve as a captain in the charter pool of the tournament.

In its glory days, the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament played a big role in putting Kona on the map, Gaffney said.

The event brought out a number of famous people to Kona’s blue waters to fish, including American actors William Conrad, Lee Marvin and Richard Boone, comedians Jonathan Winters and Arte Johnson, and Japanese movie star Toshiro Mifune.

One of Hawai‘i’s most iconic watermen, Duke Kahanamoku, also fished the tournament in 1961.

Gaffney went on to become a sport fishing journalist, covering the tournament for years for local, national and international publications. And in recent years, he judged the tournament.

The Billfish Tournament has always brought a lot of international publicity because the tournament has been good at providing information about the teams and the anglers, regardless of where they come from, to their hometown and home country publications.

With no other fishing tournament in Kona is doing that, losing the Billfish Tournament means losing that level of publicity. It also means losing the tournament’s support for conservation and the science that is conducted about the billfish species during the event.

Gaffney said anglers and teams pay substantially for satellite tags, which are put on the fish they catch and release during the tournament. The data collected from those tags have provided feedback about the travel of the species.

Albert Arthur William Threadingham III, from Australia, who has served as chief judge for the tournament since around 1990, first fished the tournament in 1977, representing Fiji.

In those early days, he said there were about 80 teams. But that number has dwindled.

“We’ve run it with only 13 teams at once, but we’d like to have 30 or 40 teams,” Threadingham said.

“The tournament was based on … the opportunity to catch a big fish.”

By the time Threadingham fished in Hawai‘i, he said everyone knew about the 1,805-pound marlin that was caught in Honolulu in 1970.

“Everyone knew there was much bigger fish in the ocean than that,” Threadingham said.

“It was Peter’s intention to get as many teams from around the world to enjoy the pristine conditions in Kona because it’s like fishing in the bathtub,” Threadingham said. “That’s very flat water, and everyone enjoys it.”

The tournament, Threadingham said, taught fishermen different techniques of trawling with lures, trawling with live baits, catching live baits and rigging them to keep them alive.  

“All those sorts of techniques we learned in Kona are still practiced around the world,” Threadingham said.

“Every tournament that ever wanted to be something was based on the ideals of the HIBT,” Threadingham said. “Whether it was taken back to Japan, whether it’s taken to the homeland mainland of America, all of the greatest tournaments in the world have been based on the way in which the tournament was run in the early days in Kona.”

Threadingham said in those early year anglers were welcomed to Kona and stayed at the historic Kona Inn where Peter Fithian was the general manager. 

The tournament included a parade, with the community lining the streets to see the anglers from around the world.

The fishermen left from Kailua Pier. If they caught a fish, they brought it back to be weighed and got a picture with Miss Billfish.

Hawai‘i County Council Member Rebecca Villegas was the 1990 Miss Billfish. Her brother won the tournament in the early 2000s.

“It’s definitely changed in size and scope compared to what it once was,” Villegas said, adding the tournament brought a lot of enthusiasm to the Kona community.

As Miss Billfish, Villegas said she spent the week answering phones and taking pictures with the fish caught by the anglers.

Threadingham has been brainstorming ways to keep the tournament alive in Kona, including the creation of an international committee of anglers.

Bobbie Fithian said it is too soon to talk about that, but she is forever hopeful to bring the tournament back to Kona.