By ODA Dive Team Coordinator, Dive Master, and Advisory Board Member Gary Liebmann
It turned out to be a fantastic day to kick off the first Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA) cleanup on Oahu for 2025 on Sunday, January 12th!
After a little more than a year, Island Divers Hawaii (IDH), has once again joined forces with us to help pursue our passion of cleaning up the ocean and making a cleaner safer environment for all the inhabitants of Maunalua Bay.
At 1:30pm on that Sunday, volunteers started to arrive at IDH in preparation for a 2pm launch. We were lucky enough to have five new volunteers, two returning volunteers, and 10 of our regular volunteers, for a grant total of 17 volunteers on the boat not including the captain!
A warm Aloha to our new divers: James Delecki, Kim Falinski, Erick McClure, Andrew Neighbors, and Jose Vasquez!
I would also like to welcome back: Scott Barrell, Kimmy Long, and Glenn Roberts.
Lastly our regulars included: Chris Ashmore, Crystal Gray, David Marcelli, Bill Metzler, Ed Sisino Dan Okamura, Rose Zhang, and our fearless deck crewmember and topside photographer Temple Liebmann. Thank you to Crystal for the "crystal clear" underwater photos!
After giving our newest volunteers a topside brief, and after Captain Matt Negaard gave the boat brief, we all boarded the vessel Sea Fox and prepared to make our way out of the Hawai’i Kai Marina into Maunalua Bay.
The weather was favorable; however, Captain Matt and I decided we should play it safe and stay inside the Bay choosing Spitting Caves as our site. There were a lot of divers onboard and many of them were new, so we wanted to ensure that we were sheltered from any unexpected currents. Spitting Caves is also a shallower site maxing out with a bottom depth of approximately 50 feet. Some of our other sites can reach 70-80 feet and not being familiar with everybody’s air consumption could cause unnecessary risks.
Before we knew it, we had reached our destination and Captain Matt swung us around for the drop off.
Here you can see the steep cliff with people on it. Recreational fishing activity is very high at this location. You can imagine how fishing hooks get caught on things on the bottom or the cliff edges and a large amount of fishing line, hooks, and lead weights end up in the waters below.
The weather and surface conditions were playing nicely, and we were fortunate to get all 15 of the divers off the Sea Fox in one drop!
We began our descent and made our way to the cleanup area with three collection buckets in tow. After placing the buckets, it didn’t take long for the busy cleanup divers to start filling them.
During the brief, I explained the importance of focusing on the removal of fishing line from the reef, and as rewarding as it is to come back with heavy buckets of lead, the fishing line is the most harmful type of debris affecting the delicate ecosystem. It was very satisfying to witness the focus and attention to detail the divers took to painstakingly snip and unhook the discarded fishing line from the entangled coral reef!
After a short half hour of feverishly working on cleanup, I started to receive signals from a couple of divers that they were beginning to approach their limit on air. Seeing mostly full buckets, I gave the signal to end the dive.
Divemaster David Marcelli rounded up the nine volunteers and brought them safely back to the boat while the remaining six volunteer divers lifted and moved the three buckets to the surface, in preparation for Captain Matt and the Sea Fox to pick us up.
After everyone was safe aboard our conservation boat, we made way back to the Hawai’i Kai Marina and back to the Island Divers boat slip.
We unloaded all of the divers and gear and spread our tarp on the ground so we could inventory and separate the rubbish we collected. In total, we ended up with three buckets weighing a combined 190 pounds! Most of that weight was in lead, but we also estimate that we collected a total of 1,500 yards of fishing line!
I can’t think of a better way to start off the new year than a full boat of passionate volunteers anxious to do their part to help keep our beautiful oceans clean. With all the interest from new volunteers, I’m excited to see what 2025 has to offer!
Of course, to keep up with tradition, all volunteers were invited to meet at Kona Brewing Company after the cleanup to talk story and share some PuPu’s!
If you live on Oahu and you want to be part of this rewarding work -- please email us!
