2018

After breakfast, we went back to the NELHA visitor center. The guide allowed us to go underground to the “cooling chamber.” The building is cooled by a complex system involving low pressure hot air and low pressure cold air. Next, we went to an aquaculture farm, where we were told about fish breeding and raising. Aquaculture is the raising...

In the morning we went to a beach to clean up marine debris. We each took a bag or bucket and walked around the beach collecting trash on the beach. While I was looking for trash I saw a sea turtle resting on the beach in a crevasse in the lava rock. At the same beach, after cleaning up...

We started today off at our service opportunity on the beach. The service consisted of picking up trash, clearing out sand from a red shrimp pond, and building sand castles with that sand. My group decided to build a whale shark named fluffy out of the sand we collected. Our castle got third place and I won a metal...

Friday 27, 2018 The day has finally arrived for the night dive, but before we would jump right into it, we spent our day at NELHA once again for a lesson in aquaculture. Like agriculture, the practice is namely raising fish in an aquatic environment. In Kona, many different studies on aquaculture have been underway. Most of the research has...

Today was great. We started off this morning by visiting a beach and doing a beach cleanup. Before we started the cleanup, a few volunteers talked to us about how to find Reef friendly sunscreen. There are plenty of sunscreen brands that claim to be Reef safe. However, they aren't. We explored the beach in search of trash. After...

Starting off the day, We made our way back to NELHA. At the building, we got to learn more about their systems to cooling the building. Our guide, whose name was also Nelson, explained to us that the building uses cold deep sea water to produce up to 70 gallons of water a day. To do this, the building...

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...

We started off today by going back to NELHA to tour a couple of aquacultures. First we went to a kampachi farm and then an abalone farm. After NELHA the black water divers went back to the Homes Over Kona to eat and rest until it was time for the dive. At nightfall we took a boat out to...

Today we were allowed to sleep in later due to the late night last night. We had a very good breakfast which consisted of an egg casserole. Our first stop along the trip was at NELHA for a more in depth tour, then we went to a fish farm. Two, actually. The first one was the main fish farm...