At around 9:30 we left for another tour of the NELHA facilities. This time, we learned about their air conditioning system. In their, buildings, they create a convection current that pushes warm air into a gap in the roof, that then moves out of the building. Beneath the building, in the crawl space, they draw in cold, deep sea water. At around 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit, it emits enough cold air to cool the building. Furthermore, the condensation collected on the outside of the pipes is freshwater, which they use for irrigation.
Then, we went to NELHA’s dry land fish farm. There, they breed and hatch kampachi. Normally, this fish cannot be caught and eaten off of the reef, because their diet consists of toxins that would be harmful to us. However, farming provides total control over their diet, which means that they can be farmed and eaten very easily. NELHA strives to use sustainable practices. They are currently figuring out how to feed a carnivorous fish (kampachi) an herbivorous diet.
Our last tour at NELHA was of the facility where they grow the Big Island Abalone. They draw in the deep sea water and mix it with filtered surface water to get just the right temperature to for the abalone. Abalone are in the same family as octopus and squid. At the end of the tour, we got to visit their petting zoo and sample some grilled abalone.
After some rest at the house, we headed out for the Blackwater Dive after dinner. At around 10:00 we left the harbour and went about 2.5 miles off the coast. Because Hawaii is not on a continental shelf, like most coasts, the water gets very deep, very quickly. We were in a few thousand feet of water in what is known as the Pelagic Zone. The largest animal migration in the world happens every night as small invertebrates rise up from the depths after sunset. I couldn’t bring my camera on the dive, but a few of the highlights were a squad of squids, a small squid less than an half an inch long, a 30 foot long pyrosome, and some various types of jellyfish.
