Young Brazilian Mateus Herdy, who was arguably the best performer throughout finals day, finished second.
In making the final, 17-year-old Herdy jumped 49 places in the rankings and is now in contention to qualify for next year's CT as well.
Fellow Brazilian Deivid Silva finished fourth.
The result lifts Christie to No 7 in the QS standings, moving seven spots up the leaderboard.
With the top 10 on the QS at the end of the year being guaranteed promotion to the CT, Christie is well positioned with just one major event to go - the Vans World Cup of Surfing at Sunset Beach, Hawaii, next week.
Moving inside the top 10 on the series, Christie will likely get a free pass through the opening two rounds at Sunset Beach.
Christie qualified for the CT on the 2014 QS with the final qualification spot.
While it saw him achieve the dream of surfing with the world's best, the low seeding saw him given the toughest match ups on the CT in 2015, and he was unable to hold his spot.
A higher seeding this time around would help his cause at the next level.
With his qualification to the CT likely, Christie will have the opportunity to compete for one of 10 Olympic qualification spots on next year's tour.
Men's qualifying series standings after the Hawaiian Pro:
1. Kanoa Igarashi (Japan) - 26,800 points
2. Seth Moniz (Hawaii) - 22,200
3. Ryan Callinan (Australia) - 20,460
4. Deivid Silva (Brazil) - 19,860
5. Peterson Crisanto (Brazil) - 19,350
6. Griffin Colapinto (USA) - 19,050
7. Ricardo Christie (New Zealand) - 17,700
8. Leonardo Fioravanti (Italy) - 16,600
9. Jadson Andre (Brazil) - 14,160
10. Ethan Ewing (Australia) - 14,030
