By ODA Maui Volunteer Diver Bobby John
A small but hardy group of ODA Maui divers got together in the early hours and ventured out to locate and remove abandoned fishing gear on a boat that we had chartered on Thursday, May 7th.
As usual, we left Maalaea Harbor around 7am and headed south toward La Perouse Bay, which was 17 miles away. This is a site that’s frequented by land-based fishermen on a daily basis and accumulates a lot of fishing tackle that gets left behind when their gear gets caught on a reef or rock. With no way to remove the gear, they cut their fishing line and leave it in the water.
Divers for this trip were: Mike Badano, Yani Caviedes, Mark Keakos, Lloyd Johnson, and Brian Seifert.
We had excellent conditions until we reached the less protected waters about 3 miles from our destination. We all had a good soaking before we entered the water to get really wet! Luckily for us the ocean conditions improved for our return trip.
Check out the critters we saw in the photo gallery at the end of the article!
One of the good things to report is that we aren’t finding as much fishing tackle as we have in the past. This is only due to our repeated efforts to remove that gear.
We now need to get into deeper waters to find the stuff. Due to spending time at depth, we all dove using Nitrox, which is a gas that gets added to the air in our tanks and allows divers to stay safely at depth longer than we could without it.
Both dives went well. We encountered currents and poor visibility on the first dive.
We moved further south about 100 yards for the second dive where conditions improved.
Ocean Defenders Crew with their Catch of the Day
We pulled 108 pounds of lead fishing weight and total debris weight of 148. That puts our total debris count from all ODA cleanup efforts for the year including boat and shore dives, to 628 pounds!
Thanks to the crew from our dive boat partners Maui Pacific Divers: Mikal (Captain), Elise, and Dana (DM).
If you want to ensure that Maui coastal waters are free of hazardous man-made ocean debris, we'd love to hear from you!
