By Kay Cooper, ODA North Hawai’i Island Volunteer Coordinator
Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA) Ocean Stewards along with ODA Founder, Kurt Lieber, and partner dive shop, Kohala Divers, visited one of our Adopt the Blue sites, for a good cleaning on Saturday, November 8, 2025! We haven't been able to clean this site as frequently as we like because when the swell comes in, this site is affected significantly as it is very shallow and is not protected by breakwalls or landmasses. This is a site that’s a frequently visited, local hangout on the weekends for families, fisherman, and swimmers, so a lot of debris from land makes its way into the ocean.
With frequent family fishing tournaments as well, a lot of fishing line will also be left behind with weights and large hooks. With the swells that come in along this coast, it can move a lot of this hazardous material farther from shore where more animals are found.
I arrived early with my son, Carl Cooper, to start loading my vehicle with collection bags, gloves, some cutting tools, and a dive flag from our partners Kohala Divers and headed over to Kawaihae Surfpark to get ready for the cleanup! This time we were doing a post-cleanup potluck! Everyone brings some food with them, and we all eat and spend time together when the cleanup is complete. Volunteers are instructed to arrive by 9:30am for the briefing and to get their free tank rental from Kohala Divers, along with any additional gear they may need.
As everyone starts to trickle in, Kurt Lieber arrived and got his camera ready to start taking pictures! Rebekah Kaufmann (Kohala Divers Owner), also joined the cleanup as land support with me, Carl, and Kurt. During the briefing, I discussed the areas we were focusing on for the cleanup, safety instructions on how to effectively remove line from coral, and what to take and what can be left. We had 9 divers, so we broke the team up into 2 groups; 4 went south and 5 went north. The teams started closer to the breakwall, looking for anything that may have been pushed closer to shore. They continued to collect for 30 minutes, then they all swam a little farther from shore to get out of the surf zone, and made their way back where they had started, spreading farther out and collecting anything that made its way away from shore from the swell.
The entire team dove for 1 hour, met back on the surface, and swam in toward the ladder where they handed off their rubbish bags to our dry team. While divers made their way into and out of the water, Kurt and Rebekah were busy taking a lot of great photos of the entire cleanup process! As full bags were being handed up, Carl and I would take them onto a grassy area and empty the bags onto a tarp, where we began to sort the rubbish into different piles. Carl was on "critter duty" ready to take back to the water any animal that made its way on land in the rubbish.
In total we collected over 20 plastic items (4 being large items such as food containers and jugs), an old cassette tape (how long has this been in the water!?), a computer chip, over 80 pieces of lead, around 40 aluminum cans, 13 golf balls, 10 glass fragments, a beer bottle, 7 cloth items (some socks, a shirt, parts of other clothing), a rubber sole from a shoe, an electronic cigarette, 2 lures, 15 metal items used as sinkers for fishing, and an estimated 3,000 feet of fishing line with around 6 large hooks! WOW!
Once everything was sorted, we all gathered around for a post-cleanup photo! Then, away to the food table we all went and sat around talking with each other in the gorgeous, sunny Kawaihae weather. In total, we had 13 participants (sorry if I spell anyone’s name wrong): Carl Cooper, Kurt Lieber, Rebekah Kaufmann, Mark England, Marjorie Zensen, Garth Edwards, Kerry Edwards, Lucas Fuhrman, Todd Hackett, Dianna Burkholder, Brenden Burkholder, and Maura Hennessy.
Mahalo for everyone’s continued efforts in helping to keep our oceans debris free!
