Aloha all,
last week I went to Kaho'olawe and the trip was so interesting that I want to share it even with people who are not on Facebook, so here is another one of my 'updates':
For those not so familiar with the Hawaiian Islands: Kaho'olawe is one of the eight main islands of Hawaii, but it is uninhabited because the military used it from 1941 to 1990 for bombing practice. The island is not open to the public. The only way to get there is by working or volunteering for one of the two organizations in charge of restoring the island, so I volunteered for a beach cleanup project from the Kaho'olawe Island Resource Commission (KIRC).
The first two questions people seem to ask: "But aren't there still unexploded bombs on Kaho'olawe?" and "Do they have bathrooms over there?"
To answer those questions: There are still plenty of unexploded ordnance, but we did not see any. And there are some facilities on the island, but not in the area where we were. Neither one of these concerns were really any issue. I was just fine with the bucket solution they came up with and I was just fine with not seeing any bombs. My frisbee friend Bart, who got me into this project, might have enjoyed finding something more interesting that trash, since he is the bomb expert for KIRC. Instead, he had to help with the trash.
We went to Kanapou Beach, which is probably Hawaiian for "Plastic Magnet". The amount of marine debris that gets washed up on that beach is mind boggling. Of course there were the usual suspects: fishing nets, plastic bottles, rubber slippers, etc. - but even though we did not find anything valuable, it was still an interesting treasure hunt:
- Surprisingly, a lot of the trash was not from Hawaii: Japanese bottles were just as common as local brands and there were hundreds of plastic tubes used in oyster farms, even though there are no oyster farms in Hawaii
- We collected hundreds of pieces of 'sharkastics' - those are plastic items with bites marks from sharks or other fish. That's obviously a concern, check out http://www.sharkastics.org if you are interested.
- How a bout a full and life size Tweetie Bird costume? Any suggestion how THAT got there?
- I forgot to bring a frisbee, but wouldn't you know it, I found a disc and a buddy to play with!
- I would have expected a toothbrush or two, but there must have been hundreds of toothbrushes on that beach!
- Extra points were awarded for lighters, because there is actually a group that studies marine debris and ocean currents by collecting data of washed up cigarette lighters, we found plenty!
- We found not one, but two bowling balls! Who looses a bowling ball on the beach? You might ask: "Is there anything you could not find on that beach?" Well, if you see the photos below, you see that we had to substitute the bowling pins with plastic containers. We actually found bowling pins, but they were not the right size...
The few times I actually saw a sea shell between all the trash, my first thought was a surprised "How did THAT get here?" It's kind of sad that finding trash on the beach becomes normal and finding a sea shell is weird, but as mentioned before, the amount of trash is truly amazing.
There were 16 of us all together. Four fearless leaders from KIRC and 12 volunteers. We picked up trash all day, then played with it for a little bit, had ourselves a nice campfire, camped out for two nights and were proud to leave a much cleaner beach behind when we returned to Maui. But there is still enough trash left (plus more gets washed up every day) for us (or you!) to return to for another beach cleanup camp out!
And that's the news from Lake Kanapou, where all the plastic in the ocean seems to end up, where some of the trash is surprisingly good looking and where the beach at least for a few months is cleaner than average.
Aloha,
Chris
