2018

Yesterday we helped out with a conservation project and went to the top of Mauna Kea. We helped conserve an Anchialine pool, which is a small pool by the ocean, by building sandcastles. Anchialine pools are essentially coastal ponds with underground connections to the ocean. However, an accumulation of sand has rendered many pools uninhabitable for...

Today our program helped to clean up a beach that was affected by the 2012 tsunami that hit the island. Also we visited the summit of mana kea one of the tallest mountains in the world. Our service project was a beach cleanup combined with a really fun sand castle building contest. The beach cleanup was pretty uneventful for me...

On day five of our trip to the “big island,” we began the day by exploring and touring various businesses that are apart of the NELHA campus. To start, we went underground at the main NELHA building and learned how the deep ocean water comes from underneath the ground to cool the building. We discovered that although the method...

Yesterday was our group service project, a beach cleanup, filled with fun activities for us to clean. First, we went around the coastal line and deep area of the beach searching for trash and had a competition to see who picked up the most trash. While we were searching. One of our group members spotted a Monk Seal...

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...

Today was a late start after the late night manta ray dive the night before. It began with a visit to kampache farms followed by a visit to an abalone farm. Lastly I went on the black water dive which lasted into the late hours of night. My visit to kampache farms was very interesting as I learned from their...

Once again we woke up, ate and left on the vans in a rush due to a lack of communication about what time we were going to be leaving at. We went to the NELHA campus to learn about efforts being made to reduce human impact on the marine ecosystem through various forms of aquaculture. The first place we...

I woke kind of late so I was rushed through breakfast and packing. But once I was on the same page with everyone we were heading back to NELHA. At NELHA we received a grand tour of how the air conditioning worked. My first specific topic is how the A/C worked which basically ran deep sea water in tiny...

Today we went to NELHA again, to view their AC system. Then we visited two fish farms: Kampachi Farms LLC, and Abalone Big Island. Then we finally got to the most exciting part, the black water dive, which was everything I wanted it to be, it was so other worldly, and seeing things that we have never seen before,...