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Kahalu‘u Bay on Hawai‘i’s West Coast Recognized as a Mission Blue Hope Spot

Featured image (c) Bo Pardau
KONA, HAWAI‘I (May 26th, 2022)

On the west coast of the island of Hawai‘i is Kahalu‘u Bay, also known as ‘āina lei ali‘i, lands that adorn the chiefs. It is a wahi pana, a sacred, celebrated, and storied place abundant with cultural and ecological treasures. 
Cindi Punihaole, director of The Kohala Center’s Kahalu‘u Bay Education Center (TKC-KBEC) and Dr. Christine Zalewski, president of Dear Ocean, are working to preserve Kahalu‘u Bay for generations to come. Punihaole describes how her native Hawaiian upbringing shapes her perspective and approach to conservation at Kahalu‘u Bay. “We were taught that taking care of the ʻāina, the land and sea, is your survival. It’s second nature for me to look at what gives us life.”
 
 
International marine conservation nonprofit Mission Blue has named Kahalu‘u Bay a Hope Spot and Punihaole and Zalewski as the Hope Spot Champions.…

Posted in .Homepage, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Featured, mission blue, Partner Stories, Photo of the Day, Uncategorized |

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Olowalu Reef Is Announced as the First Hawaiian Hope Spot!

Photo Credit (c) Pauline Fiene

Mission Blue is honored to announce the newest member of the Hope Spot family — and the first such area in the Hawaiian archipelago! The Olowalu reef is Maui’s “crown jewel,” a one thousand-acre coral reef that is home to the largest known manta ray population in the US (430 individuals) and the oldest coral in the main Hawaiian Islands. The Olowalu reef sustains an amazing diversity of rare and unique coral species and acts as a nursery to replenish and populate the reefs of Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
In Hawaiian history, Olowalu was known as a Pu’uhonua (sanctuary) where people could take refuge, take time to reflect and heal. Given the rapidly declining resources locally and globally, the Olowalu community, in concert with many local partnerships, has taken the initiative to restore the balance that has been lost between people and nature.…

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Swimming Around The Campfire

Manta Ray Experience Highlights Need for Balance of Animal Safety and Tourism
By: Kristin Hettermann

Kona, Hawaii — We were the last guests of the evening at a campfire like no other. It was pitch black when we emerged to flashlights waving us back to our vessel, and as the final few boats brought their nightly activities to a close, we reluctantly came out of the water. A moment before, I had been surrounded by a dense school of Āholehole (Hawaiian flagtail), their mass producing a strobe-like effect that created the feeling of being on a crowded dance floor. Just below me, two mantas were doing barrel rolls just feet from my body, and another dozen circled the vicinity. What if they came a few feet closer and lifted me out of the water?…

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IUCN- Planet at the Crossroads.

The IUCN World Conservation Congress 2016 kicked off two days ago in Honolulu and we can’t imagine a more auspicious occasion! Less than one week after President Obama announced the expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument around the Hawaiian atolls as the world’s largest marine protected area, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) convenes its conference on the monument’s doorstep for the first time anywhere in the United States.
In a recent response to President Obama’s announcement of the expanded Hawaiian monument, Mission Blue Founder and National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Sylvia Earle remarked:

Americans on this centennial anniversary are encouraged to “find your park” and enjoy these wonders that are the collective conscious of our nation. But with President Obama’s expansion of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument from 50 to 200 miles out from the Northern Hawaiian Islands, now the world’s largest marine protected area, history will remember this anniversary and next century as the “blue centennial”—the time when the national park idea was brought to the ocean.…

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Sacred Forests – Part Two: A New Friend to the Rescue

By Sam Low, author of Hawaiiki Rising

A year earlier, Nainoa had driven into Honolulu to a restaurant called Fisherman’s Wharf – a place with a maritime motif, a motley collection of binnacles, steering wheels and curved ship’s ventilators – to have lunch with Herb Kane and a friend of his from Alaska.
The meeting was inspired by an event that took place more than two centuries earlier when Captain George Vancouver visited the island of Maui. While there, he measured a large canoe and found it to be over 108 feet long. It was fabricated, as he later wrote in his ship’s log, “of the finest pine.” Vancouver knew that pine did not grow in Hawaii.
“Where did the wood come from?”…

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Sacred Forests – Part I: The Search

By Sam Low, author of Hawaiiki Rising
In 1990, the Polynesian Voyaging Society decided to create a new canoe, to be called Hawai’iloa after a famous Tahitian navigator. Hawai’iloa would be built of traditional materials – lauhala for the sails, olana for the lashings, koa for the hulls, ohia for crossbeams to connect the hulls, and hau for stanchions, decks and steering paddles.
“Hokule’a was built quickly, of modern materials mostly,” Nainoa Thompson recalls, “and then we went right into sailing – it was an ocean project – the emphasis was on sailing her, not building her. But when our ancestors built and sailed voyaging canoes, it required the labor and arts of the entire community, everyone working together – some collecting the materials in the forest, others weaving the sails, carving the hulls, lashing, preparing food for the voyage, practicing rituals to protect the crew at sea.…

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Exploring the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

By Dr. Richard Pyle

September 27, 2014: Back to French Frigate Shoals
After leaving Pearl and Hermes, we had scheduled two and a half transit days to get back to French Frigate Shoals, which would have allowed us one and a half days of diving. However, the crew of the Hi’ialakai made better-than-expected headway in transit, arriving early enough at French Frigate Shoals that we were able to get in two full days of diving. Even before the bubbles cleared after plunging into the clear blue water for my first deep dive yesterday, I was startled when I turned around and saw a Galapagos Shark bearing down on me. I managed to turn my video camera on just in time to capture its closest pass, and from that point onward, we were obviously the subject of much interest among about seven or eight larger-than-usual Galapagos Sharks.…

Posted in Partner Stories |

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Navigating the Starpaths toward a Sustainable Planet

This May, Master Navigator and Ocean Elder Nainoa Thompson will launch Hokule’a’s worldwide voyage from the island of Hawai’i. The theme is malama honua, which means to take care of each other and this island in the universe called earth, the only home we have.
There is a scientific aspect to the voyage as well. As nature guides Hokule’a and Hikianalia across the world, much focus will be on what lies beneath them.
“It’s a great voyage of peace, not just among ourselves, but making peace with nature,” said Sylvia Earle. Mission Blue and Dr. Earle are proud to be among the  scientists and agencies partnering on Hokulea’s worldwide voyage.
The voyage will include visits to marine areas that are being cared for and seeing progress and areas that need help. …

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