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

ODA Volunteers came together once again for this twice a year boat cleanup in the North with our partner dive shop, Kohala Divers, and their boat Namaka! Since this advanced cleanup charter goes out only 2 times per year, we decided to visit previously cleaned and adopted sites, which get frequent fishing activity from the locals, but also gets a lot of runoffs when storms happen from the Kohala Mountain just above it. Hawai’i Island has experienced 3 hurricanes, a tropical cyclone, and heavy rainfall in just a short amount of time, but all after our last cleanup along the Northern Kohala Coast. 

Volunteers met at Kohala Divers around 7:30 in the morning on October 29^th to check in and complete waivers, and to make sure they had all equipment needed for a successful and safe cleanup. Our charter was completely full with 17 volunteers! Excellent! Once everyone got on board and set up their gear, the wind started to pick up quite a bit – our local and seasonal trade winds – so we did a limited initial boat briefing so we could quickly pull out of our small boat harbor. 

We first decided to go to the site closest to our harbor and a frequently visited cleanup site, the Kawaihae Gulch, which has a very prominent rocky point that extends out from the shore, where locals like to fish from. We decided to drop in a bit more south of the actual cleanup site to scout for any new debris and to ensure we had a good survey of this site. Hawai’i Island ODA Chapter Leader, Sarah Millisen, and I got dropped off first, farther south of the rest of the divers, closer to the gulch to look and see if there was a lot of rubbish that came through in our storms over the past few months. We had our DPV scooters with us (dive propulsion vehicles), swam in closer to shore, then descended to start our survey. The rest of the divers proceeded north of where we were dropped, and they all entered off the boat and descended to start their cleanup. 

The visibility was extremely low where Sarah and I were, due to the shallow water, sandy bottom, and runoff from the gulch. When we got closer to shore, we immediately came across brand new, very thick fishing line that took us a good 10 minutes to follow, while bundling it up, and collecting a lot of lead weights as well. It appeared to us that this is also a visited fishing site; however, with such poor visibility, I would not bring a group of people to clean this area as it is safer with just a couple divers as a team. 

Once Sarah and I completed our survey of this area, we used our DPVs to meet up with the rest of the group. The pickings were slim toward the south, but once the team started to move more north, we found old fishing line and weights, along with some new line that we carefully disentangled from the coral and collected. We found some PVC piping, some large screws used as weights, and some cloth here as well. After around 50 minutes, we began our 3-minute safety stop (break) as a group around 20 feet, swam out to open water away from the shore, deployed our surface marker buoys, then ascended safely away from the boat. Once on the surface the boat came to pick us up and we sorted through our rubbish. We wound up filling half a black bin with line! Great work team!

We decided to go to one of our farthest, northern sites that is frequented by fisherman, but we entered at a different location. After a 1-hour surface interval, and some snacks, our team was ready to go again! Sarah and I stayed with the group this time but still had our scooters. We entered and descended more north of the site we usually clean, to see if there was any new debris that needed cleaning. We found some lead or some small fishing line, here and there, but it was looking very clean! We continued to move north as a group, searching for anything that needed to be collected, but it looked like we have done well in maintaining this site!

Sarah and I decided to speed ahead of the group, looking to see if there was debris, we could bring the group to. When we came across an old fishing net, on top of a wall and laying on coral. We got to work right away, carefully cutting around the coral, working the net away from the wall, and cutting it into smaller sections that would make it easier to handle around delicate coral. After about 10 minutes we completely filled my bag to the rim and away we went to join back with the group! 

We were just ready to begin our 3-minute safety stop when our team found several debris fields in this final location! There was a larger, garden back material that was filled with sand and dangerously wrapped around some coral. Several volunteers came to help cut this back and away from the reef and shake out the sand. Others found some old boat line, more fishing line, and some aluminum cans. It was a very successful cleanup and the site itself was absolutely gorgeous! Once we finished with the current debris field, we needed to start our safety stop and come back to the boat. Once on board, all the divers began to break down their gear as the rubbish was sorted through again. We completely filled one large black bin! 

Overall, we recovered approximately 4,000 feet of fishing line, 8 pounds of lead weights, several old and large fishing nets, multiple fabric materials, a few gardening bags/tarps, several large hooks for big fish, a few aluminum cans, a couple of glass bottles, a few lures, and small bits of PVC pipe. Way to go team!!

ODA Hawai'i Crew with their "Catch of the Day"

Along with Sarah and I, we had the following volunteers with us on the boat this day:  Keith Cabral, Kerry Edwards, Jezza Evans, Todd Hackett, Mo Hennessy, Kaeley Jonsson, Gene Malone, Meghan Murray, Bo Pardau (photographer and longtime ODA volunteer), Jamie Pardau, Carolina Piel, James Redshaw, Pam Small, Marly Silvestri, Erik Stockdale, Doug Watson, Dianne Warden, and John Warden.

Mahalo to everyone that participated in helping to clean and maintain our oceans! Without you, we would not be able to make a large impact. Keep your eye open for future cleanups – we’d love to have you back!

If you love the oceans like we do at ODA, you could be part of this effort from wherever you are. Your donation of any amount will help keep this work going strong!