By Kay Cooper, ODA North Hawai’i Island Volunteer Coordinator
Another successful cleanup in the North with our partner dive shop, Kohala Divers!
Ocean Defender Alliance (ODA) volunteers came together to do another cleanup in the North of the Island of Hawai’i with our partner dive shop, Kohala Divers, on their boat, Namaka, Monday, May 18th.
Kohala Divers provides the vessels for our advanced Northern cleanups twice a year to try to access hard-to-reach sites along the North Kohala Coastline. These charters are considered advanced cleanups due to strong winds, strong currents, and large swell that impact this part of the Island. There are not many moorings for the boat to tie onto so our crew can access the spots a lot of fishermen will drive down to, so we have to do live boating for drop off and pick up of our diving volunteers!
Everyone met at the shop at 7:30 in the morning to check in and get any last-minute gear they may need before diving. Once on the boat, everyone put their gear together, listened to the briefings, and away we went! My goal today was to explore a new area where fishing is known to happen by the locals and see if we could spot any new spots where abandoned fishing line, lead, or nets may be.
Our first site was just north of Black Point and between our farthest northern site, Potters. We have done maintenance cleanups at Black Point where a lot of fishing happens, but I have also seen fishing nets just south of Potters as well, so I wanted to do an exploratory scouting dive between these sites to see what we may find.
We checked to see how much current was showing at Black Point. Fortunately for us, the current was mild! We gathered together and I conducted a safety briefing and procedure on how the dive was going to look, what our goals were, and the importance of moving together as a team during exploratory drift diving. We all got into our gear, Captain Ty positioned the boat, and our divers jumped into the water together and surface swam closer to shore where we would all be descending together.
As soon as we dropped, we all found old fishing line that we began to work on right away. This line had been there a long time, and the coral started to grow over it. There were also some old lead and metal piping that we picked up as well.
This area only took us about 10 minutes to clean up, then we started to move together northward, looking for anything else that needed our attention. The coral structures, the lava fingers, and the overall topography underwater here were absolutely stunning! We hardly found anything else to clean along this route, which is such a great feeling! When we all reached one hour of diving and decided to come up to 20 feet to do our 3-minute safety stop, Sarah noticed something large in the sand near coral and was draped over a span of several feet. This was only at around 30 feet of water and when we got down to it, we realized it was a large, fitted sheet from a bed that was full of sand! We all got to work, cutting away at the sheet and removing it carefully from the coral. Then the safety stop was completed and we all got back on the boat and headed to our next site.
During our drive to the next site, Captain Ty spotted several floating buckets and some netting that we picked up along the way. Way to go Ty! One of the plastic items was a water jug that had a large frogfish living in; we returned it safely to the water! Once the item was brought back onto the boat, we saw 3 more smaller sargassum frog fish come off that and we also safely returned them to the ocean – so cool!
The second site was a maintenance cleanup of a place we have visited twice before and absolutely needed our attention. We went back to Kawaihae Gulch, the closest site to our harbor, where we have found so much fishing line and quite a few more interesting things in the past. I stayed on the boat this time while my colleague from Kohala Divers, Mo Hennessy, dove with our group. The wind was picking up a little, so we needed to enter the water quicker than at the previous site. I gave another detailed safety briefing, then our volunteers got into their gear, all waited together at the back of the boat while Captain Ty positioned everyone for entry. Once all the divers were in the water, they were met with a pretty strong northern surface current, so they decided to descend farther out from the site and access it more quickly below the surface.
Once below, it did not take long for our divers to spot the areas were they left off before, where the fishing line was draped over coral and some lead was found. They all spread out and got to work. This was a more challenging cleanup as the line was very old, grown into and around coral, lower visibility here, and some northern current. With safety for the reef as a top priority, our divers carefully cut line and removed lead that was wedged into some tight, tricky places.
After one hour of hard work, our divers surfaced after their 3-minute safety stop; the wind had calmed down, and conditions were perfect for a safe pick up of our volunteers.
Overall, we collected an estimated 1,000 feet of fishing line, a large plastic water jug, a 5-gallon bucket, several large metal fragments, 15 pieces of lead, a fitted bed sheet, several plastic fragments, and a plastic container of metal hooks. Estimated total weight was around 40 pounds! Excellent work to all of our amazing ODA volunteers and staff at Kohala Divers!
Our volunteers and staff this day included: Juan Chacin; Jim Foschia; Mo Hennessy (Instructor at Kohala Divers); Laura Jim; Rob Kimball; Chad Merrill; Sarah Milisen (ODA Hawaii Island Chapter Leader), Bo Pardau (Long time ODA Volunteer and our Photographer! Thank you Bo for the amazing photos!); Jamie Pardau; Erin Roberts; Chuck Weber; and Ty Widhalm (Captain at Kohala Divers).
Please continue to look at our calendar for future cleanups, on our Facebook page, and Kohala Divers webpage as well! Mahalo!
