By Founder and President Kurt Lieber
I landed at the Maui airport on Thursday afternoon, October 30th. Lloyd Johnson and I had been in communication for what felt like months, trying to sync both our schedules to do a couple of underwater cleanups on the reefs of the island.
Lloyd has a vast array of friends that are dyed-in-blue, ocean lovers. They put together small dive teams that go out regularly from the shore and remove whatever man-made debris is out there harming the reefs and all the myriad life forms that call these waters home.
Volunteers on this day were: Lily Bennett-Everett, Ethan Berk, Chuck Gallup, Bobby John, Lloyd Johnson, Laura Legge, Shanoa Miller, Brian Seifert, and Anita Wintner.
We met at the Kihei Harbor early in the morning and after loading the Pro Diver boat, Kilikina II, Lloyd took a few minutes to brief the team on where we were going and how to safely operate on the boat and in the water once we got to the dive site.
Some people had previously made dives to this area from the beach and noticed a lot of garbage that was beating up the corals as the waves and surge moved the items around. In order to efficiently remove the debris, we decided to charter a boat rather than swim back and forth from the beach, which was about a 20-minute swim each way.
It only took us 15 minutes to motor over to the site, and within minutes of arriving, we had 8 divers splashing and dropping down. Anita and I stayed on the boat and were tasked with inspecting each item that came up, to make sure no critters were hiding in any of the debris.
Because there were no moorings at this site the captain had to “live boat it,” meaning he dropped the divers in the water and moved the boat a safe distance away, and we kept an eye on where the divers were and when they came back up.
The divers were spread out over about a 200-yard radius from where the boat initially dropped them off, and after 40 minutes they surfaced while the captain got us into proximity to allow the divers to climb back aboard.
After a one-hour break the captain moved the boat a little north of where we’d been before in order to search a new area. Forty minutes later all the divers surfaced and we now had filled a 55-gallon bucket with an enormous amount of cans, plastic cups and food wrappers.
Anita and I searched each item for any animals that might be hiding and removed lots of tiny critters. Anita even found an octopus in an aluminum can. When she finally got him out and was ready to set him free, she got bit. Tanks a lot!
It was a great day on and under the water. Everyone was all smiling as we headed back to the harbor and reveled in how great it felt to free up the reefs of this deadly debris.
Thanks to the captain and crew from Pro Diver, AND each of the volunteer divers!
