Hui hits 100th seawater sampling in South Maui

Hui O Ka Wai Ola South Maui co-team lead Maile Sharpe (from left) and volunteers Scott Graves and Harry Hecht emerge from the waters off Kalepolepo Beach Park on Monday with the hui’s 100th ocean water sample since the program expanded to South Maui in 2017. The Maui News COLLEEN UECHI photos

KIHEI — Equipped with a small jar, a plastic syringe and a large blue bucket, Maile Sharpe, Scott Graves and Harry Hecht waded past their knees into the cool waters off Kalepolepo Beach Park Monday morning.

The three have made dozens of trips to the beaches of South Maui, collecting samples of seawater to be studied for clarity, chemistry and other indicators that help scientists and health officials understand what’s happening below the surface.

But this time they had an audience, who clapped as they emerged from the water with the milestone 100th sampling in South Maui since Hui O Ka Wai Ola expanded its program to the region in 2017.

“It’s quite an honor to be recognized for this effort, which we think as volunteers is incredibly important or we wouldn’t be doing it,” Graves said. “We feel very strongly about the condition of the reef and the ocean off Maui and that it’s instrumental for the people that live here to enjoy and also for the tourism industry.”

Hui O Ka Wai Ola was co-founded by the Maui Nui Marine Resource Council, The Nature Conservancy and West Maui Ridge to Reef Initiative, and consists of five part-time staff and more than 30 trained volunteers. The program has been sampling and documenting water quality from Honolua Bay to Papalaua since 2016, and from Maalaea to the Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve since 2017. The regular sampling helps complement the state Department of Health’s own data to provide a bigger picture of leeward Maui’s water quality, the hui said.

Sharon Banaag (center), executive assistant to Mayor Richard Bissen, uses a multimeter to measure qualities such as salinity from Hui O Ka Wai Ola’s 100th sampling of ocean water in South Maui on Monday as program manager Liz Yannell (left) and South Maui team co-lead Ylenia St-Louis watch.

Tova Callender, West Maui watershed and coastal management coordinator for the West Maui Ridge to Reef Initiative, said that when they first started out, “we had inadequate data, both with the frequency and the coverage.” Now, they have data for locations all along the island’s leeward coast.

“This matters cause you can only manage what you measure,” Callender said. “We now know 100 percent of sites on leeward Maui exceed state standards for turbidity. We know that broadly nutrients are entering through groundwater, not through streams. We see the transition from plantation agriculture and the nutrients making their way through the system and how it declines over time after plantations are out. And we know that effective wetland management is key for creating natural treatment for pollutants in the water, as we see in Kealia.”

Every three weeks, volunteers collect and test samples from 18 sites in West Maui, 13 in South Maui and two on Lanai. They use equipment to measure water quality on-site for turbidity, salinity, dissolved oxygen, temperature and pH levels. A sampling of the water is filtered for sediment or sand, placed in a special acid wash bottle on ice and shipped off to the University of Hawai’i School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology laboratory to test for nutrients, which will provide a glimpse of the ocean’s chemistry, explained Liz Yannell, program manager for the hui.

“When these things are in imbalance, it can be very harmful to marine life, to people, and of course everything that we are inextricably connected to,” said Alana Yurkanin, Maui marine program manager with The Nature Conservancy. “It’s really helpful and powerful to have data to better understand what is going on here and what we can do about it. And that is, of course, where the hui comes into the picture. Volunteers are the heart and soul of this program.”

Sharpe got inspired to join the efforts after noticing bleached-white reef while paddleboarding in Maui waters. She was taking a sustainable science course at UH-Maui when the hui held a meeting on its water quality testing program. Sharpe showed up and signed up to be a volunteer — she’s now one of the five staff members and the South Maui co-team lead with Ylenia St-Louis.

Liz Yannell (center), program manager for Hui O Ka Wai Ola, instructs Maui County Council Member Tom Cook on filtering ocean water from a syringe as South Maui state Rep. Terez Amato looks on during the hui’s 100th sampling in South Maui on Monday at the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary Visitor Center.

“I just really enjoy the process of being out there every third week and seeing what’s happening on the coast and educating myself about where it’s coming from, where is the problem, what can we do about it, and sharing that information with other people,” Sharpe said. “Because as we’re out there testing the water, so many people come up and say, ‘Well, how is it? Well, what can we do about it?’ They really want to know what’s happening.”

Both Hecht and Graves have been collecting samples since the program expanded to South Maui.

“I’ve really enjoyed it,” Hecht said. “We hope that our effort pays off in some sort of improvement to the ocean. … That’s why we started doing it and we’re still doing it.”

Graves said in light of what’s happening in Florida, where rising ocean temperatures are threatening coral reefs, “this type of work is critical.”

“Coral can only stand so much pressure and then it dies,” Graves said. “And it protects our land from swells and waves and that sort of thing. So it’s really critical that we pay attention to what’s going on in our reef system.”

The 3,200 samples collected from 48 sites since 2016 have helped reveal that Waipuilani is on average the most turbid site on the leeward side, and that Cove Park has more than twice as many nitrates as any other site, Callender said. They’ve also highlighted the impacts of sediment, fertilizers and wastewater on Maui’s coastal waters. But there’s good news too — like the significant drop in nitrate levels at Kapalua in the last two years, the decline in turbidity at Camp Olowalu and the low pollutant levels at Kealia Pond, likely due to the wetlands’ ability to filter and absorb pollutants before they reach the ocean, the hui said.

The data have enabled funding to target sources of pollution on land, and have been included in Department of Health data sets and university studies to better understand reefs and nearshore health, Callender said.

“It’s provided a baseline from which to understand if the things we’re doing on land are making a difference and also a baseline to see if that baseline is shifting over time,” she explained. “So in order to continue to inform policy and actions on the ground, we have to continue to monitor the coast.”

For more information on the hui’s work, including its coastal water quality report for 2016 to 2021, visit huiokawaiola.com.

* Managing Editor Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.

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