This past Saturday we teamed up with our friends at Aaron’s Dive Shop to clean up Waiahole Beach Park. Waiahole Beach is located on the east side of Oahu and has beautiful views of Chinaman’s hat. This beach collects a large amount of garbage that washes ashore along with trash left behind by people. This is our third time cleaning the beach park. Nudi Wear and Ocean Defender’s Alliance cleaned this beach just 2 months ago and it was already over due for another cleaning. You can read more about that cleanup here.
14 volunteers showed up at 9am ready to work, even on a Saturday! They grabbed buckets and gloves and set out along the shoreline. At first look, the beach park did not appear to be that dirty, but this beach can be deceiving. Once the volunteers started looking around, they were very surprised by the amount of debris they were finding! There was a lot of plastics and fishing industry waste mixed in with natural debris. They were also finding items partially buried or hidden under the sand.
The volunteers were not afraid to jump in and get dirty! They used shovels and other tools to remove parts of abandoned boats, large ropes, tires, and more rubbish that had sunk down into the sand and mud over the years.
We appreciate each and everyone of our volunteers who took time out of their weekend to take care of this beautiful island we all love so much.
In total, we removed over 1,100 pounds of discarded waste from the beach and surrounding park! Included in this total was 5 tires, an artificial Christmas tree, abandoned fishing nets, several large fishing buoys, and a lot of single use items such as plastic bottles, eating utensils, take out containers, and aluminum cans.
