By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

Superbowl Sunday was the perfect day for our Super Habor Cleanup!

ODA Hawai’i Volunteers Jeff Milisen and Tony White scouted the harbor a few days prior to figure out where we’d concentrate our efforts. We weren’t expecting many folks to be able to attend due to it being an unofficial holiday.

Here's an aerial shot of the the harbor we took in 2018.

Our scouting volunteers were doubtful that we’d be finding much, as they hadn’t seen a lot of evidence of debris. On top of that rain was forecast…

People started showing up a little before 9am. And sure to form, it was raining. Not heavy, but a light drizzle, which turned out to be a benefit, as the clouds kept the temperature way down.

ODA Hawai’i Island Chapter Leader Sarah Milisen gave a briefing on and included instructions for deck support on what they should do to help the divers once the man-made debris started coming to the surface.

In all, we had 42 people participate! This is a good kind of surprise. Here are the generous people who volunteered their Super Sunday:

Alex Aguilera, Ross Bailey, Angela Bilter, Tom Bock, Angelica Byrne, Juan Chacin, Mark De Moss, Dove De Moss, Hadyn Drabing, Garth Edwards, Kerry Edwards, Marcel Engelbrecht, Mark England, Lucas Fuhrman, John Gallagher, Henry Gallagher, Amy Haugen, Rocky Jewell, Casis Jones, Kaleb Matlack, Jeff Milisen, John Moore, Meghan Murray, Devin O'Hearn, Taylor Overy, Jamie Pardau, Bo Pardau, Breana Rich, Laura Rogers, Joy Rojanavongse, Avi Shaim, Macayla Sparks, Erik Stockdale, Harvey Surprenant, Candre Surprenant, Brian Sward, Don Tremel, Tony White, Gabrielle Zecha, Marjorie Zensen. Sarah Milisen organized the event, and while Bo Pardau and I took care of the photo documentation.

Because we hadn’t found a specific area of the harbor to zero in on, it was decided to just let each pair of divers go wherever they wanted and we had at least one person on the docks following them around. They had a rope in-hand to toss to the divers when they had located something that needed to be hauled out.

The harbor is roughly 100 yards wide by 300 yards long, which meant people were spread out all over the place. With the divers quickly finding debris to haul out, it required a lot of people running around on the docks from one spot to another to help with the heavy lifting.

Spectacular photographer Bo Pardau was flitting around like a bird taking pictures of all that action.

Jeff, Tony, and a friend of theirs named Chris decided to dive in an area that we usually can’t get to safely because of all the boat traffic. They jumped in and headed towards the harbor entrance/exit to the open ocean. Previously, they had seen several big tires sitting on the bottom as they motored over the area in a boat. The bottom is only 12 feet deep or so, and you can clearly see through the water.

Knowing that they were going to be underwater in an area frequented by boats, Jamie Pardau paddled her kayak over and made sure no boats came close to them.

Little did she know she would be tasked with hauling massive tires through the water and over to us on the docks, about 100 yards away. While that might not sound like much work, have you ever tried dragging anything behind a kayak? It’s nearly impossible to steer. But about 15 minutes later she landed a big one, and in the process built up her arm and shoulder muscles.

By the time Jeff, Tony, and Chris had swum several more tires over to the dock, we had several other volunteers ready to do some heavy lifting. Phew! All I had to do was carry my camera.

After about 2 hours of mayhem, all the divers exited the water, and we hauled all we had brought up over to a staging area. After cleaning off the docks of all the mud and debris, we got to pose with our “Catch of the Day.”

For a day with low expectations, our actual results were surprisingly impactful with the volunteers hauling out 33 tires and a mountain of other debris estimated to weigh 4,500 pounds in total.

Now that’s what I call a Super Sunday! Thank you to all the super volunteers for your time, energy, and smiles!

Learn more about the work we do to keep Hawaiian coastal waters clean.