By Kay Cooper, ODA North Hawai’i Island Volunteer Coordinator
Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA), with dive boat partner Kohala Divers, are back at in on Hawai’i Island near the north small boat harbor in Kawaihae. This is one of several sites adopted for regular cleanups called Adopt the Blue, that we maintain every 2-3 months to keep clean of fishing debris and human rubbish. This site has been untouched for several months mostly due to weather, but also because the summer was a busy time for ODA, having multiple cleanups on the Big Island of Hawai’i. We couldn't put it off any longer and needed to get this site cleaned!
On Saturday, September 13th, 14 total volunteers rallied, ready to clean the ocean and the land around Kawaihae's small boat harbor and breakwall. Volunteers met at Kohala Divers around 9 am to claim their free tank rental for the cleanup and rent any gear they may need to clean under water. Everyone then met at the small boat harbor parking lot, near Kawaihae canoe club, and started to get their gear together. Once everyone arrived and signed in, the briefing, given by ODA's Northern Big Island Coordinator, Kay Cooper, began around 9:45 am. Safety was discussed as our top priority as the waves started to pick up before divers entered the water. The primary focus for this underwater cleanup was along the breakwall leading from the beach and around the outside of the small boat harbor. I asked for 2 volunteers to swim directly out from the beach, to a popular night diving site called Nudi Bar, which is only 30 feet or less away from the end of the breakwall surrounding the harbor, to check for rubbish or fishing line that may have been swept out to that spot.
There were 2 main groups for the underwater portion of this cleanup: 9 divers staggering their positioning under water working the breakwall and about 10 feet away from it, and 2 divers checking for rubbish farther out at Nudi Bar. Once the divers at Nudi Bar had completed their sweep, they were to swim back toward the breakwall to meet up with the rest of the cleanup crew. We had 3 volunteers dry, looking for rubbish along the land breakwalls, the docks the boats in the harbor are tied up to, and all along the parking lots where we find a lot of discarded cigarette butts and rubbish. The 3 dry volunteers on land were myself (Kay Cooper), my son Carl Cooper, and Kohala Divers Instructor Kelly Arnold.
We take care of places like this because it's such a beautiful place. See what it looks like at sunset!
While Kelly and Carl were busy cleaning the parking lots and breakwall, I was keeping an eye on divers in the water, watching for bubbles making sure they weren't drifting too far out and in case anyone needed to swap a full rubbish bag for an empty one. The divers stayed down for 1 hour, tackling stubborn fishing line, gathering lead weights, and any rubbish that made its way into the ocean from the shore.
Inside the Kawaihae small boat harbor, there is still a small bait ball that lives in there which attracts anywhere from 5 to 30 fisherman in that small harbor DAILY! Fishing line winds up being draped across the boats in the harbor, all along the break walls, throughout the parking lots, and on the boat docks that get walked on daily. So, there was certainly no small amount of fishing line to be found underwater, both old and new. Quite a bit of the fishing line that was pulled up this time around the breakwall was the very difficult to cut and impossible to break nylon threaded fishing line, almost like thick string, that really are devastating to corals and especially marine life.
Divers usually start their cleanup by entering from the sandy beach on the north side of the breakwall, working their way along and around to the south end of the breakwall where most of the fishing line and rubbish are found. This is where our divers spent most of their time, carefully removing the line and lead weights that can be pushed in far between coral and rock with the strong swells that come through this area.
As the time approached the 1-hour mark, I signaled to the divers to go ahead and gather everyone else and make their way back to shore. They exited the water along the inner wall inside the small boat harbor. Divers then brought their full bags and carried larger portion of netting to the tarp I had laying in the parking lot so we could empty the bags and sort the rubbish into piles by items. What a haul our volunteers gathered!
Total they pulled up an estimated 3,500 feet of fishing line, around 70 lead weights, 4 golf balls, 1 large bobber, a couple of rags, 1 large plastic food container, a couple of plastic cups, several heavy lead pipes (tied to the fishing line and used as sinkers), around 8 lures, several metal food containers, around 6 hefty pieces of a larger rope net, 8 aluminum cans, 2 scuba masks with snorkels attached to them, a pair of swimming goggles, 3 glass bottles, a child’s plastic bubble wand, and 3 spark plugs. Thankfully, around 4 sea creatures were safely released back to the ocean including a baby octopus! The estimated total weight of everything was around 70 pounds!
The volunteers who participated in this cleanup are: Kelly Arnold, Tim Bliss, Carl Cooper, Jeremy Evans, Lucas Fuhrman, Todd Hackett, Maura Hennessy, James Kregness, Meghan Murray, Ali Niswonger, Jacob Schneider, Angel Wannemacher, and Mindy Sue Werth.
Mahalo to all of our wonderful volunteers and their incredible ongoing efforts to help make our oceans debris free!
If you live on the Big Island and would like to help make your coastal waters clean, there are needs for both onshore volunteers (cleaning beaches, parks, and breakwalls) and for snorkelers and scuba divers. Email us at volunteer@oceandefenders.org!
