By ODA Hawai’i Island Chapter Leader Sarah Milisen

September was a busy month for ODA Hawai'i Island—we were going at it in full force!

One of our boat partners Aquatic Life Divers (ALD) offered their quarterly charter this month, so we filled the boat full of volunteers. We ventured out into the high seas... with some significant south swell... making our adopted dive sites from ODA/ALD difficult to get to, so we shifted to plans B and C, as there's always opportunity for cleanups in new areas!

Our crew for the expedition: Captain Colin McDavid; Mary Wallingford and Tanya Fleming as boat crew; and the divers were Juan Chacin, John Gallagher, Henry Gallagher, Jeanna Jansen, Bo Pardau, Jamie Pardau, Ann Phillips, Tony Sepanski, and Don Tremel.

Fishermen have been a constant presence at a local dive site known as Freeze Face. They don't appreciate divers mooring up at this site, so much so, that the moorings installed by a local nonprofit have been cut several times, forcing the mooring installation to be more expensive, using all chain so that it cannot be cut.

Naturally, we thought it might be a good spot to look for fishing debris off this rock jetty. Once our divers got down there to see what the situation was, because we didn’t find much abandoned fishing equipment there we hypothesized that perhaps fishermen have resolved to fish less here, or regular divers from their charters clean up the majority of the debris as a natural upkeep. We did manage to locate and remove some lead and a couple of lures, but nothing that needed a dedicated dive or two. Off to dive site number 2 (plan C?)...

Over the last year, off Pine Trees beach, I’ve been seeing fishermen casting sometimes a dozen lines in the water at a time, off a point, mostly on the weekends. The area’s day-use moorings, available for public boater use, has about 60 moorings all along the coast, but there are many gaps where there are no moorings, and this point is near one of them: Kona's famous "Golden Arches" dive site. 

This cleanup crew were clawing for debris—addicted to the search and recovery of line and lead... and I wasn't sure we would find some... but then…we found the motherload. In one single dive, we pulled up 6000 feet of fishing line.

In this single dive, we pulled up 45 POUNDS of lead. Over one hundred little (and big) lead pieces. We looked around, low on air, furiously collecting what we could with our dwindling air supply... and had to give up in the name of safety, abandon the devastation, and head up for a long surface swim back to the boat, having used all our available air collecting everything we could with any minutes available. It was utter chaos grabbing what we could for as long as we could.

There is still so much more down there, it will absolutely be a repeat site that ODA now as it’s on our radar to clean regularly. Lines tangled in coral heads, lines threading from one rock mound to another rock mound, lures, huge hooks hanging off the drop-off, and lead everywhere.

I've scheduled another emergency cleanup at this site next month, but these mission-oriented cleanups take special gear, and more expensive costs due to boat needs. If you are able to, please donate to ODA to help us pay for this specific mission. We need to remove this debris ASAP to avoid tangling wildlife living in and around our reefs! 

Big, BIG MAHALO to those divers and crew who efficiently cleaned what we could in the time (and air) allotted, and the long swim back with our heavy bags of lead and line. It wasn't an easy day—but it was PRODUCTIVE thanks to our amazing volunteers and crew!!!

Special thanks to Bo Pardau for getting us consistently great pictures of all the action.