Aloha,
Thank-you to everyone for our Hanauma Bay cleanup held Saturday February 13. We had record turnout with 152 volunteers (than includes keiki) plus 8 supporters from the FoHB (Bob Kern, Micky Stash, Lisa Bishop, Sue Cahill, Ellen Spielvogel, Glenn Roberts, Geoff Johnson and myself). David Iwana and Dennis Manalili also led two of the biggest groups, namely the Hawaii Kai Lions & Leo Club and students from UH and HPU.
The volunteers included:
- 37 members of the Hawaii Kai Lions and Leo Club
- 26 staff and family members from Canon and their partner Media etc
- 25 members of the US Navy and their families
- 22 HPU students
- 15 students from the UH Manoa Accounting Club
- 12 members of various fishing clubs
- Several individuals and families who are either on our email list or saw our online event posts (Facebook and Midweek).
I want to thank everybody who helped to make Saturday’s event a big success and fun event. There are too many to name, but here are a few special thanks:
- Kaipo for helping with logistics and getting the permit, and even coming in Saturday morning to ensure we were all set
- The Board of Directors and members of the Friends of Hanauma Bay who helped on the day:
- Bob Kern for helping to kick off the event with an introduction to the Friends of Hanauma Bay mission and taking questions from volunteers at the tent,
- Lisa Bishop and Micki Stash for taking the HPU students and the Lions & Leo Club is a separate area for kick-off and sign-out
- Sue Cahill who helped setting up the tent and taking the Canon group down to the beach to coordinate the beach cleanup on the far side of the bay,
- Bob Kern, Geoff Johnson and Ellen Spielvogel for staffing the main event tent and making sure volunteers signed in as well as completed data cards for items collected,
- Dennis Manalili for coordinating 30 students from both UH and HPU to remove invasive plants behind the beach desk and the second bathroom – please check out some of the before and after picture that I posted on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hanauma/
- David Iwana for not only signing up the Hawaii Kai Lions and Leo Club to volunteer, but also for leading their beach cleanup efforts around the lifeguard towers and the nearer end of the beach,
- Park Rangers John Aimo and ???, who helped with questions throughout the event,
- Education Staff for letting us borrow tables and chairs, and Annie for handling the education orientation for the two groups who went to the beach after the cleanup
- Malama Maunalua for providing tools and educational materials, and for helping with various print jobs
- And everybody else who provided moral and physical support!
While I posted a few photos on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/hanauma/), there are a lot more photos that you can access via Dropbox. If you have any issues accessing or viewing the photos, please let me know:
Click Here To See Lots More Pictures From Our 13 February 2019 Clean-up!!
Please feel free to share the link or forward this email to anybody I may have left off the recipient list. And please make sure to like us on Facebook!
I would like to highlight a couple of items that stood out for me when I added up the information from the Data Cards:
- The drop in cigarette butts collected continues – from more than 1,300 in August to 470 in November and to 360 in February.
- There is no change in the number of plastic bags collected. While there is a plastic bag ban in place for Oahu, we are just seeing different types of plastic bags, made of thicker material and called “reusable”.
- We saw an increase in the amount of food wrappers and containers collected. This could be due to the number of volunteers we had, who managed to cover a much larger area and who dug much deeper into the vegetation to pull out what the wind had blown in, or the mongoose had pulled in.
- Fewer fishing lines / fishing gear washed up at the far end of the bay, which could be seasonal and due to a decrease in swell, wind and waves.
Any questions, comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me at outreach@friendsofhanaumabay.org. Thanks again to everybody, and let’s do it again on August 13 and November 12!
Anke.
