By ODA Hawai’i Island Chapter Leader Sarah Milisen
To say that the currents around Kona this year have been weird, would be an understatement. Swirling offshore and nearshore, thick, plankton-filled debris current lines have been touching the reefs this 2026, as well as bringing in nets and offshore stuff onto the nearshore reefs. It's also made several of our cleanup sites hard to access this year. After our most recent trip in June, I knew we needed to hit up Pipe Dreams and swim south around the point again.
Volunteers for this outing on Tuesday, July 14th were: Juan Chacin, John Coladonato, John and Henry Gallagher, Milo Giorgio, Carolyn Kendall, Diane Kim, Julie Leonard, Aden Lewin, Amy Montanaro, Dot Norris, Bo and Jamie Pardau, with Erik Stockdale rounding out the crew.
None of our easily accessible sites were feasible on Dive 1 due to "swirling pit of death" currents. So, we opted for Freeze Face, which is just south of Pine Trees Beach (the Kohana Iki development). Divers found lots of lead, and up in the extreme shallows, I was able to find a lot of little cauliflower coral heads entangled with line and hanging lead. Despite there being a strong current here as well, we all made it back to the boat with some heavy lead-laden bags. A bit tired from the strenuous swimming, but everyone came back with some form of debris.
I was determined to go to Pipe Dreams again. We haven't been able to clean there for months, and the Tokunaga Shoreline fishing tournament was last month. After a thorough evaluation current situation—we deemed it safe to jump in.
We took the plunge and worked our way south from the Pipe Dreams mooring, to find tangles and tangles of line and bunches of lead. Another 65 pounds of lead collected on this trip alone! It seems like it never ends.
One of our volunteers did a shore dive here a couple days ago, testing some new equipment, and quickly lost his underwater camera. But, not to worry, Diane promptly found it!
And after cutting my way through line after line, I somehow managed to lose my favorite Spyderco knife! Dang it. It was a busy dive day, for sure.
The highlight for us all though was Jamie and Dot finding a massive antler coral completely entangled with line all around it—like a hairbrush full of stray combed hairs.
Bo happened to see them working and was able to capture the before and after shots of this strangled (no more!) coral head. HURRAY, TEAM!!!!
At the end of the day, coming back into the harbor, we were greeted by a lovely big tiger shark that swam close to the surface, right at the harbor entrance. ALMOST as a thank you to us all for our hard work today.
MAHALO to everyone who pitched in for our monthly cleanup with our dive boat partner Kona Honu Divers!
If you're a diver and live on the Big Island, let us know if you want to explore becoming part of this amazing crew of ocean stewards!
