Trilogy Helps Remove 5 TONS of Plastic From Kaho‘olawe Beach
Trilogy crew member, Captain Mario, couldn’t believe his eyes:
Here on an island where there aren’t any any people, an entire stretch of golden sand was buried under mountains of plastic.
Laundry baskets, fishing floats, colorful tangles of nets; just thousands of pieces of evidence of man—yet there weren’t any humans to be found.
He, along with Trilogy crew members Gabe and Aaron, joined a team of volunteers from Malama Maui Nui and Kaho’olawe Island Reserve Commission (KIRC) for a four day, three night trip to Kaho‘olawe—the island off Maui’s southwestern coast that’s famously covered in bombs.
In the days prior to Western contact, this small island was sparsely populated, since food and fresh fresh water were scarce. It’s believed that only a few dozen people ever lived on the island at one time, and it was primarily used as a fishing ground, with residents being temporary—not permanent.
It was dedicated to the Hawaiian deity, Kanaloa, god of the sea and ocean voyaging, and was used as a training ground for Polynesian navigators, who would learn to steer by, and study the stars, for the journey between here and Tahiti.
Even in the days after Western arrival, Kaho‘olawe largely remained an infrequently-visited outpost, and aside from brief stints as a penal colony, as well as a cattle and sheep ranch, a sense of calm enveloped the island—but it wouldn’t last for long.
In 1941, after the surprise Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kaho‘olawe became a target island that was relentlessly bombed by the US military for nearly 50 years. Despite decades of protests (in which some lost their lives), the bombing continued until 1990—which means for the first 17 years that Trilogy was offering snorkeling tours in Maui, planes were still flying overhead, dropping bombs on the island next door.
Finally, when the Navy transferred ownership of the island back to the State in 1994, the Kaho‘olawe Island Reserve Commission was established, which is the team that Captain Mario and crew were joining to combat another threat that’s gripping the island:
Plastic.
Kanapou Bay, where the team went ashore, is a rugged, windward-facing coast where ocean currents and surrounding cliffs make a “catcher’s mit” for debris.
Even as early as 1993, a consultant report provided to KIRC made mention of a large, sandy beach that was covered in driftwood and plastic.
“Tangled piles of salt bleached driftwood, fishing nets and other flotsam line the edge of the beach. Here can be found the massive trunks of oak and redwood trees, carried by currents from the northwest coast of America, as well as fragile glass fishing floats which have drifted from the Sea of Japan.”
Nearly 30 years later the scene has only worsened.
The mission was possible through grant money KIRC had received for marine debris removal, and even though they’d done a similar cleanup only a couple of years ago, the five tons of plastic that accumulated on the shore had returned in just those few years.
“This was much more than your regular beach cleanup,” said Mario, “where you have some gloves and a bag on the beach. It was pretty rugged right from the start.”
To begin with, the team needed to cross the Alalakeiki Channel from Kihei, Maui, past Molokini Crater, and then toward Kaho’olawe’s southeastern tip, where the waters can be pretty rough.
Once inside the confines of Kanapou Bay, the team transferred into an inflatable raft with all their belongings waterproofed and packed for the short paddle to shore.
Once safely on land, the realities sunk in of the place the team would call home for the next four days.
No electricity. No water (aside from what was packed in). No roads. No footprints. No bathroom. Little shade. And they needed to pack out everything they brought in—including human waste.
The group would work early, when the sun wasn’t as hot, break for a few hours in the middle of the day, then work until sunset, make a fire, and sleep beneath the stars.
“The night sky was insane!” Mario says. “With no light pollution and no one else around, I could barely even make out constellations I already knew were there.”
With such a black, wide open sky, he could instantly see why celestial navigators came to this island to train.
At the end of four days, the team had collected over 5 tons of plastic that was loaded into oversized bags, and removed from the island via helicopter.
Some of the plastic will be repurposed, including some that will fill burlap sacks and be used for erosion mitigation, and other types that can go through a shredder and be recycled and given new life.
To Riley Coon, Trilogy’s Director of Sustainable Tourism, projects like these are vitally important and hold a deeper connection than simply cleaning up a beach.
“We make our livelihood on the ocean,” says Coon, “so we have a vested interest having a clean ocean. We look at that island every single day on our Molokini snorkeling tours, and as a Native Hawaiian-owned company, for us to have the opportunity to give back to that place is just something we’re grateful to be a part of.”