On Saturday, September 16th, 2023, the Nudi Wear team prepared for our fifth cleanup in three years at Waiāhole Beach Park. Waiāhole Beach Park is an overlooked beached on the windward side of Oahu. It has beautiful views of the Kualoa Mountain Range and Mokoli’i Island, also known as Chinaman’s Hat. However, it also has a major trash problem. Nets, buoys, and plastics wash in from the ocean, trash flows downstream to the beach, and people often ignorantly discard items in the park too. We have made it a mission of ours to adopt this beach and keep it as clean as possible. Over the three years we have been monitoring it, we have found numerous hammerhead pups, turtles, sea birds, and fish that have been impacted by the large amount of pollution and illegal fishing that occurs here. Prior to this cleanup, we have removed nearly 14,000 pounds of trash from this one beach and the surrounding shoreline.
Since our last cleanup at Waiāhole Beach Park was over a year and a half ago, we knew there was going to be an large accumulation of trash. We decided to team up with two local organizations, Aaron’s Dive Shop and Hawaii Marine Animal Response (HMAR), to tackle the daunting task.
In total, we had 16 volunteers show up at 8:30 in the morning, ready and willing to get muddy! We started early in the day to take advantage of low tide and the opportunity to remove debris that would again be underwater in a few hours. Some volunteers took to the brush with buckets and grabbers to pick up trash. Others headed to the beach to used shovels to dig out tires, fishing nets, and other debris that has slowly been buried and hidden in the sand and mud over time.
One especially taxing chore was digging out a kayak that was filled with mud. It eventually had to be cut to let out the heavy mud and removed from the beach in two sections.
The muddiest of tasks was digging out large tires partially buried below the high tide line. It was worth it though to get them out of the water and prevent them from leaching anymore harmful chemicals into the ocean!
In just over 3 hours, we located and removed 14 tires, 6 fishing net buoys, a folding table, a tool chest, a car jack, a kayak, illegal fishing traps, a boat motor, a chair, multiple pillows, and over 200 pounds of derelict fishing nets.
In total, we collected an astounding 2,508 pounds of debris from the beach and surrounding shoreline. Everyone left covered in mud but with high spirits knowing they made a lasting impact on the ocean and marine life in the area. Mahalo to Aaron’s Dive Shop, HMAR, and all the volunteers who took time out of their weekend and busy schedules to beautify this little stretch of island. A special thank you to Anabel Cepero for taking such amazing photos of the event!
If you’re on Oahu or planning a visit, check out our upcoming event page for future cleanups! Our next scheduled event is a Halloween Cleanup Dive on October 7th at Point Panic. We would love to see you there!
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