In the morning, we volunteered at Opae ‘ula with the Hawaii State Parks to help clean up the Anchialine Pool On a beach right by the airport. First we did a short beach cleanup. Our main goal was to pick up the plastic that had washed up on the beach. Plastic doesn’t decompose completely and is super harmful to marine life. While we were picking up trash, we saw a Green Sea Turtle and a Hawaiian Monk Seal. There’s only a population of five Monk Seals on the Big Island. Seeing two within a few days is not common. We called the Seal Rehabilitation Center and Reported the siting.
After the beach cleanup, we started shoveling sand out of the anchialine pool. Anchialine pools are endemic to Hawaii and only exist here within the United States. They are full of unique ecosystems within their brackish water. When the Tsunami hit Hawaii back in 2011, it pushed a whole bunch of sand into the pool, which absorbs all the water and causes the pool to die out. Our job was to shovel sand out to help restore the pool. We even had a sand castle contest with the sand we shoveled. My group won with a sculpture of the Big Island.
After some rest at the house, we went on a bus to the summit of Mauna Kea. We got to the summit just before sunset. There, we watched the sun go down and the telescopes turn on. From the peak, you could even see Haleakala on Maui. I was most excited to see the Keck Telescopes (middle two in first picture), because I had heard so much about them.
