On April 10th, we held our first underwater Easter egg hunt and our monthly dive against debris at our adopted site Point Panic. Every month we join forces with great volunteers to monitor and remove debris from this dive site located by Kewalo Boat Harbor on Oahu. This month we decided to add a little belated Easter fun! We had 18 divers show up ready to find some Easter eggs and trash! After a quick dive and safety briefing, divers took to the water in buddy groups in search of rocks painted like Easter eggs and looking for garbage that needed removal. The surface conditions were great, making entry and exit a breeze. Visibility was around 10 feet but it improved for divers who headed south towards Kewalo Pipe. Divers worked in groups to remove some of the larger items like tires.

The 18 volunteer divers worked together to haul out an impressive 246 pounds of garbage from the ocean in just one dive!

The two largest and heaviest items removed where a heavy machinery tire and a car tire. Some other large items pulled from the ocean were a water hose and a 10 foot long inshore fishing rod and reel.

The most unusual item found was a billiards trophy.  This is the ninth billiards trophy we have found in this area over the past year.

We removed a lot of glass bottles, aluminum cans, and single use plastics. We also removed an impressive amount of fishing waste including fishing line, lead weights, hooks, and an abandoned fishing net.  Unfortunately these are all still too common in the boat channel.

We were excited to have soldiers from the 325th BSB command on Schofield Barracks join us and become members of the Nudi Dive Club. They were a big help and we hope to see them again at future events. A few of them also enthusiastically went back in for another cleanup dive. They removed an additional 4 pounds of rubbish from the ocean, bringing the days total to 250 pounds! Awesome work!

Divers reported seeing an Easter bunny, a very large stingray, a frogfish, a snake eel, a Hawaiian lionfish, and quite a few species of nudibranchs in addition to finding all of the eggs!

nudibranch

A big mahalo to everyone who came out and dedicated their Saturday to making our oceans a little healthier. Congratulations to all of our Easter egg prize winners! Jethro, a long time Nudi Wear volunteer, won the grand prize of a 2-tank dive with Ruckus Sportfishing and Diving.  We hope you can join us at our next cleanup on April 24th at Magic Island with Ocean Defender’s Alliance (ODA)! Click here for more details. Check for upcoming events on our Events page or follow us on Facebook!