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Plastic waste turns Hawaii's Kamilo Point into "trash beach"

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Maui : Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, Part 2

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Maui : Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, Part 2

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Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum: PART I

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Maui : Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, Part 1 

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Maui : Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, Part 1 

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Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum: PART I

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Kamilo Beach lies at the easternmost tip of the Hawaiian Islands.

Kamilo Beach, which translates from Hawaiian to "twisting or swirling currents" is more often known as "Plastic Beach". Itʻs one of the dirtiest places in the world.

Centuries ago, native Hawaiians would gather giant evergreen logs that floated down from the US Pacific Northwest and landed on the shores of Kamilo Beach, using the logs to build dugout canoes.

Today, instead of collecting trees or other natural materials, Kamilo Beach is a hook for the worldʻs plastic debris. Trash from Japan, Russia, the US, and other countries finds it way to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and over 90% of this trash is plastic.

Each year, volunteers clean up between 15 and 20 tons of trash from Kamilo Beach and its surrounding nine-mile-long coastline.

Once plastic enters the ocean, UV rays break it down into smaller and smaller microplastics. This creates a swampy soup of plastic debris that can collect on massive scales, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Plastic can take hundreds to thousands of years to break down completely. Fishing line, for example, lasts for 600 years in oceans.

As long as people continue to use plastic at current rates, beaches will remain covered in garbage. There is simply not enough human power to keep up with beaches like Kamilo that act as convergent points for ocean currents carrying plastic.

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The Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum celebrates and preserves the long history of sugar cane plantations and sugar processing mills in the four major sugar island communities of Puʻunene, Hawaiʻi, Kahului, and Maui. The Alezander & Baldwin Museum depicts the growing, harvesting, and milling of sugar crops that negatively affected the Hawaiian landscape and the islandʻs air quality by burning the cane fields, a necessary task that leaves only the sugar-bearing stalk for harvest.

The museum is names after the co-founders Samuel Thomas Alexander and Dwight Baldwin of Hawaiʻi, two influential agricultural businessmen that sought to exploit Hawaiʻiʻs ideal, year-round climate and compete with leading sugarcane economies.

The Hawaiian sugarcane industry would last for 168 years and become second only to the stateʻs export of pineapples. The museum highlights the labor-intensive sugar cane harvesting process that required the constant import of laborers from overseas and drove a population explosion of about 340,000 more people from the mid-1800ʻs and onward.

Visitors to the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum can view the Founderʻs Room, which explores the founderʻs industrial legacy and business partnership that is notable for providing some of the highest wages for workers globally and the development of advanced irrigation systems.

A visit to the museumʻs Mill Room offers interactive displays with fitting narration, lighting, and sound effects. A scale model of an actual cane crushing machine and a 1915 locomotive bell acknowledges the influences of the rail industry on the success of the sugar industry.

The Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museumʻs Field Work Room is a great place to get an in-depth view of how plantation workers lived and worked the fields. At one time, sugarcane fields stretched from the mountains to the sea, and the Field Work Room gives an inside look at how sugarcane plantation laborers lived and worked.

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Kauaʻi : Nā Pali Coast State Wilderness Park

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Kauaʻi : Nā Pali Coast State Wilderness Park

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Early Polynesians used the constellations to help them navigate their double-hulled outrigger sailing canoes across more than 2,000 miles of ocean and bringing them to Kauaʻiʻs Nā Pali coast. It is estimated that the first occupants came to this remote stretch around 1,200 AD.

The coastline is only accessible by water of strenuous foot trails which meant that the people that lived in these valleys were well protected in this remote location. Outrigger canoes provided convenient travel by water. Over hundreds of years, Polynesians, and eventually the Tahitians, migrated to Nā Pali by canoe, bringing influences that became the basis of Hawaiian culture.

The Nā Pali coast has an abundance of rivers and flowing waterfalls, which meant freshwater was readily available and in ample supply. Fish, kalo, sweet potato, and breadfruit were the main food staples.

Because Hawaiian history was passed down orally, there is no written record of how many lived along the Nā Pali before Western contact. It has been said that anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand flourished on this coast before Captain Cookʻs "discovery" of Kauaʻi in 1778. One of the earliest written records of the Nā Pali document seeing approximately 70 inhabitants fishing along the shoreline of Nu ʻalolo Kai.

Kauaʻiʻs current issues are mainly centered around people disrespecting the land, culture, and residents in the area. One of the direct effects of this is that trash and permanent camp set-ups are left behind, frequently within archaeological sites, including heiau.

In April 2018, a historic flooding event devastated communities across the North Shore, closing vital roads and state parks. After a year of repairs, the Hawaii Department of Transportation announced it would be reopening to the general public with a new permit system that aims to limit the human impact on one of Hawaiʻiʻs most popular attractions: the Nā Pali Coast.

The new permit and reservation system is similar to that being used successfully at the Haleakala summit on Maui. It will include vehicle traffic being limited through a paid parking and shuttle system. Sue Kanoho, Executive Director of the Kauai Visitors Bureau hopes the new permit and shuttle system will help lessen the impacts on the park and better preserve the wilderness areas.

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Hanauma Bay was formed within a volcanic cone on the island of Oʻahu.

The beach and surround natural park get their name from two Hawaiian words: "hana" which means bay and "uma" which means curved.

To the Hawaiians, Hanauma Bay has long been part of their history. The bay was historically an excellent area for fishing. Records show that the Hawaiian royalty in the 1800s often stayed at the bay for entertainment and fishing.

Development of the Hanauma Bay area began at the turn of the century, with a few dirt roads. Paved roads arrived in 1931 along with modest bathroom facilities and a guide rail for the steep passageway down to the base of the crater wall. After World War ll, construction of the area increased and Hanauma Bay quickly became a hot tourist spot.

Hanauma Bay was declared a protected marine life conservation area and underwater park in 1967. By 1990, overuse of the beach and surrounding area became a large problem. Specifically, visitors were walking on the reef, swarming the surrounding areas, and parking on the grass and on the sides of the road.

A few years later, in 1998, an admission fee was charged, which helped to reduce the number of visitors. In addition, a mandatory educational video was developed requiring all visitors to the park to learn about reefs, the nature preserve and its rules, and how to protect the marine life.

Today, some issues that affect Hanauma Bay include chemical contamination from sunscreen pollution. Concentrations of oxybenzone and other common UV filters were measured in subsurface water samples and in sands from the beach-shower areas in Hanauma Bay. Results indicate that oxybenzone contamination poses a significant threat to the wildlife and coral reef system of Hanauma Bay. In order to recover Hanauma Bayʻs natural resources to a healthy condition, effective tourism management policies need to be implemented. Which is where the impacts of COVID-19 come in. Hanauma Bay was shutdown on March 16 and went from 3,000 daily visitors to virtually none. However, this allowed researchers to take advantage of the unprecedented absence of visitors and study the impact of humans on the county parkʻs diverse marine life. There were already signs of more fish and the coral reef coming back to life. After seeing the remarkable improvements to the natural life after being shutdown, Hanauma Bay has implemented a limit to only 1000 guests per day and it is also closed to the public every Monday and Tuesday to lesson the impact.