By Kay Cooper, ODA North Hawai’i Island Volunteer Coordinator
Our conservation warriors gathered together on Saturday, November 16th for a Whale Season Celebration cleanup of our shores and parking lots.
At 8am, people started gathering from many parts of the Big Island of Hawai’i to participate in educational booths and activities for a shore cleanup.
Here I am displaying our beautiful information table!
We had over 20 volunteers to help clean the rubbish and log the information for Keep Puako Beautiful! I’m thankful that I was able to do this along with my son, Carl, and show the other volunteers where the worst spots were.
Starting a few months ago, a large bait ball made its way into Kawaihae Harbor, where Kohala Divers and Siren Sport Fishing keep their boats. This has already been a popular local hangout spot for families to swim off the old boat ramp and the occasional fishing.
Word quickly spread about the new bait ball, so the fishing has grown exponentially, with both docks full of fishing poles, buckets, and chairs.
The entire break wall and shoreline all the way around the entire harbor is frequently full of fisherman and their families. This has led to a great increase in fishing lines all over the docks, parking lots, breakwalls, and dirt around the harbor. The diving boats and fishing boats as well have had fishing line draped across the boats that need to be carefully removed so as not to hook any of the staff or guests that charter the boats.
Fishing line around this area was not the only large issue we found. Cigarette butts were absolutely everywhere as well as bottle caps, fishing hooks, and food wrappers. From around 8am to 10:30am, volunteers who arrived would glove up, get a bucket and a grabber and head off to clean different areas.
Volunteers removed rubbish from the Kawaihae Market parking lot, the street leading to the harbor, around Ocean Sports, Kawaihae Harbor parking lot, Kawaihae Canoe Club Parking lot, and the Kawaihae boat ramp and beach. An estimated 4,000 feet of fishing line was removed from the land!! An estimated 300 cigarette butts, 100 bottle caps, 100 fishing hooks, and around 200 different varieties of trash, from plastic food containers to food wrappers.
The fishermen frequent this area so much they have even began to lay out cots here to sleep over night so they can be there early the next morning to start fishing again.
We thank Cynthia Ho from Keep Puako Beautiful and Hawai’i Boat Clubs for hosting this event! There were many tents, education booths, activities, drawings for prizes and giveaways, and free gifts such as t shirts, shopping bags, pencil bags, and stickers to all who participated! Our volunteers are greatly appreciated and truly are an invaluable asset to helping keep out 'Aina (land) and Kai (ocean) clean and healthy!
Please continue to look for future events on our website! If you're on the Island of Hawai'i and would like to help out please email us. We'd love to hear from you!
