Following is a report from one of ODA’s awesome Oahu, Hawai’i volunteers Ken Staples. He has been on just about every dive ODA has done with our partner Island Divers Hawai’i. He not only dives and writes, but he also took all these underwater (UW) pictures as well. Nicely done, and thank you, Ken!
By ODA-Hawai’i Volunteer Ken Staples
Thanks to the great team of divers who joined ODA Hawai’i and Island Divers on Mother’s Day (Sunday, May 13th) for another successful clean up dive.
Led by Mary Christensen, Island Divers lead Divemaster, we left Maunalua Bay early afternoon and headed to Spitting Caves. This is a popular fishing spot close to China Walls. Armed with cutters, knives, buckets, and mesh bags, we all dropped in and started cleaning a 50-foot area just off the wall at a depth of about 40-45 feet.
Along with me, the volunteer divers this time out were: Henry Bennet, Marc Cowdrey, Christina Klemme, James Knight, Crystal Lopez, Joel Moribe, Dan Okamera, Robert Reynolds, and Glenn Roberts.
We very quickly filled two large buckets and multiple small ones with a large amount of monofilament line, lead weights, hooks, bottles, spark plugs, and a lot of other debris. We removed most of the line from healthy coral.
The find of the day was a decent-sized lantern still in pretty good shape....found by Mary, of course! After a short 45 minutes, we inflated the lift bags which pull the buckets up, and we headed to the surface. We had gathered so much off the bottom that many of us carried our own bags and buckets as well!
There was a tangible feeling of great satisfaction felt and celebrated by all of us as to our accomplishment of the day.
The timing of this dive was also perfect as Mother Ocean deserves our care and needs our help.
Can't wait till the next dive. I'm sure our boat will be full again. Mahalos everyone for your service to the ocean and her inhabitants!
If you are in Oahu and want to join the next dive, please visit this Island Divers page and book your spot with a $10 donation. :-)