By Kay Cooper, ODA North Hawai’i Island Volunteer Coordinator

Our ODA volunteer team was back at it for another much-needed cleanup on Saturday, March 15 at one of our partner Kohala Divers’ Adopt the Blue sites, Nudi Bar/Break Wall! This site is a real challenge to schedule and clean, especially in the winter due to high swell and strong winds. This cleanup has been canceled three times this winter due to the weather conditions, so it was truly wonderful to be able to get in and get this done! 

At this site, there was a bait ball that entered the harbor about five months ago and this area has been full of fisherman and families ever since. Daily fishing, literally all day, and so much fishing line laying all around on the ground, in the breakwall, and draped on boats, not knowing what has made its way into the ocean. You can see some of the typical fishing activity here:

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We met a little earlier this day, at 8:30 am, along with Cynthia Ho from Keep Puako Beautiful, to get waivers signed and land volunteers set up with buckets and gloves to start cleaning all around the water and parking lots near the site.

 Divers started to arrive around 9:30 am to get their free rental tank from Kohala Divers or any gear they needed to rent. We started our briefing of the site, safety, matching buddy teams, and discussing what items we could expect to pull out of the water at 10:00 am. Though ocean conditions were very calm to start, the swell really started to pick up and come in about 10 minutes into the dive so our divers could not clean close to the breakwall as planned; but there was still so much to clean in a very small area! 

While the divers were working underwater, myself and my son, Carl Cooper, were offering shore support seeing if divers needed bag switches for empty ones, or to bring up heavier items. Most of the divers stayed working only within about 50 feet from where they started due to the amount of line and netting they were working to remove! 

One of our volunteers, James Kregness, came to the surface needing a new bag and to offload a mass of fabric netting he pulled from under water, this net alone (even though it was small), must have weighed at least 5-10 pounds! Way to go!

After an hour of cleanup time, divers started to make their way back to shore and each one of them had their bags full of line and, especially, lead weights. Carl and I began to sort the rubbish into separate piles and began cutting weights and lures from the fishing line. Divers started to make their way over to help sort, once they set their gear down, as there were large piles of entangled rubbish that needed more finesse. 

Overall, our amazing volunteers removed around 80 individual led weights weighing around 30 pounds (wow! a lot couldn't even be cut from the line as it was so entangled); approximately 2,000 feet of fishing line; 2 fabric nets; 1 spark plug; 1 golf ball; several lures; multiple metal sinkers such as large screws and heavy metal objects; a few aluminum cans and various mixed metal objects like lids and bottle cap;, a part of a metal bowl for auto maintenance; parts of a cell phone and a case; a part of a lead pipe; a lighter; a couple of springs; and around 20 fish hooks.  Whew!

Our volunteers for this cleanup were: Carl Cooper, Michael Dodge, Heidi Ewing, David Giff, Harvey, Cynthia Ho, James Kregness, Adrian Murphy, Kelly Rohlfs, Todd Sparrow, Neng Sutherland, and Chuck Weber. Apologies for any misspellings or incorrect names.

What amazing work from our conservation team! We are beyond honored you volunteer with us at ODA to help make a difference for a Debris-Free Sea! Mahalo for all your efforts and we hope to clean with you all again! 

If you're thinking about supporting this great ocean cleanup work, please check out our Ways to Give page and see all the great options to partner with us!