By Kay Cooper, ODA North Hawai’i Island Volunteer Coordinator and Dive Instructor and PADI IDC Staff Instructor and Conservation Sensei at Kohala Divers

On Saturday, August 31, we teamed up with our Northern Hawai’i Island dive boat partner, Kohala Divers, for a dual-site cleaning day. We revisited two of our adopted sites: a cleanup of Akoni Pule  Highway and an ocean cleanup at Kawaihae Surfpark!

We’ve not been able to organize a cleanup here in the north in a long time. The flooding that Hawai’i Island received about 3-4 months ago left so much runoff in the oceans that it reduced underwater visibility to zero, and with the recent storms, we had high surge which made it unsafe to dive. 

So here we were, back at it again! Each storm that comes through the north brings lots of wind, so our highway desperately needed to be cleaned to stop the rubbish from blowing into our oceans! We started early at a 7:30am morning meeting at Kohala Divers shop to get everyone geared up with gloves, safety vests, and rubbish bags along with an in-depth safety briefing. 

We were ready to get started! With 13 highway volunteers, we broke up into groups of two, one cleaning the highway heading south of the shop, and the other group cleaning the highway heading north of the shop. The crew started to clean on one side of the road for 30 minutes then safely crossed to the other side making their way back for the last 30 minutes.

There was a total of 13 full rubbish bags left on the side of the road for pickup along with larger items such as tires, a large hub cap, larger plastic items, large wood items, and even an old and rusted cement mixer! Great work crew! After much hard work and sweat, back at the shop we met to start getting ready for our ocean portion of the day, our Adopt the Blue cleanup at Kawaihae Surfpark!

Our incredible highway volunteers today were: Mia Askovich, Peter Askovich, Mathew Belcher, Kalei Devilly, Mo Hennessy, Cynthia Ho, Joyce Lee, Melina Menchetti, Kelly Rohlfs,  Buzz Samuelson, Harvey Surprenant, Don Tremel, and Doug Watson.

Many divers participated in the highway cleanup, so we all met back at Kohala Divers shop to prepare first at Kohala Divers shop by getting their free tanks, courtesy of Kohala Divers, and any gear that needed to be rented as well. Everyone drove over to Kawaihae Surfpark (less than a 5-minute drive from the shop), where we began to set up gear before the briefing began. We had 12 ocean volunteers come together under the shade to hear my site/safety briefing. We decided to break up into two main groups, everyone having dive buddies within these main groups, and the teams headed in different directions in the ocean, north and south. 

Some buddy teams worked closely along the breakwall in each direction, others swam a little farther out to the end of the length of a cast from a fishing pole, while others zig-zagged the middle area looking for rubbish others may have missed.

One of our frequent and experienced ODA volunteers, Tony White, with his group, pulled a very large, square plastic pallet out of the water onto the breakwall along with a tire that had been in the ocean for a long time. Great work! Other teams found new and old fishing line that was entangled around beautiful coral that took some patience and time to cut to free.

Many aluminum cans were brought out as well as glass bottles, five golf balls, a mask, three hair ties, a battery, two electronic cigarettes, 34 lead weights, and around 1200 estimated feet of fishing line! Wow! This was a very successful cleanup and surprising to see so much still at this site as this is the location we frequent the most. It is a popular local hangout and family fishing tournaments are held here a few times a year where the breakwall will be lined with families who have their fishing poles in the water. 

We also had a wonderful opportunity to have another instructor from Kohala Divers, my coworker, Jonah Rondash out with us to certify two divers in the Dive Against Debris Specialty! Not only do they now have their specialty certification, but they are also now part of the ODA community! 

We had five incredible shore support and beach cleanup volunteers who removed a lot of rubbish from land and from in between the rocks of the breakwall, including two wonderful keiki (kiddos), one my son and the other was the daughter of a volunteer here on vacation who decided to help cleanup on their last day! That's dedication! They helped in looking for bubbles of divers, pulling the full bags out of the ocean, getting all the divers out, emptying the rubbish bags, and of course, cleaning the land all around our ocean!

Our ocean and shore support volunteers today were: Peter Askovich, Mia Askovich, Mathew Belcher, Alex Calish, Carl Cooper (my son), Kalei Devilly,  Breanna Hayton, Mo Hennesy, Joyce Lee, Gail Menasco, Abby Menasco(daughter of Gail), Melinda Menchetti, Jonah Rondash (Instructor for Dive Against Debris), Don Tremel, Tony White, and Liz Zakins.

We're so fortunate to have such an outstanding presence of ocean enthusiasts and shore support volunteers who truly make ODA an effective ocean conservation organization. Thank you to everyone who joined both the highway and the ocean cleanups! Please keep your eyes and ears open for our next event! 

Our regularly ocurring Adopt A Highway and Adopt the Blue are great opporutunities for volunteers of all ages to join in a cleanup for your local environment! Email us if you want to join in next time!