Partner Updates
The debris to be cleaned up in Vatia (Credit: National Park of American Samoa).
Sacred Land; Sacred Ocean
With the sun casting its golden ray upon the glistening Vatia Village coastline, our community came together on Saturday, May 18, 2024, for a day of purposeful action and environmental stewardship. The Occasion? The National Park of American Samoa’s first Volunteer Coastal Clean-up event in 2024, where hands joined, hearts connected, and ripple of positive change spread along the shores.
During the clean-up initiative across four sites in Vatia, an idea was introduced, a simple yet effective strategy to streamline waste sorting: using black, white trash bags and buckets. Volunteers were equipped with white bags designated specifically for single-use plastics, black bags for miscellaneous debris and bucket for any sharp materials that could rip the plastic bags. This color-coded system not only facilitated efficient waste collection but also ensured that recyclable materials, particularly plastics, were segregated from non-recyclables.
Nearly a 100 trash bags were filled with all the debris that were collected from the cleanup. Black Trash bags were thrown in the public garbage bins, and some stacked at designated sites to be collected by American Samoa Power Authority’s crew. White trash bags with single used plastics were hauled back to the National Park warehouse to be sanitized and disinfected on a later date by another volunteer group. After cleaning these plastics, they will be utilized for our upcoming Marine Debris Project.
Graphical Abstract (Photo Credit: Surfrider Kaua'i).
Interannual variability in marine debris accumulation on Hawaiian Shores: The role of North Pacific Ocean basin-scale dynamics.
By members of the Hawai'i MDAP (Dr. Carl Berg, Cynthia Welti - Surfrider Kauai; Dr.
Nikolai Maximenko, Dr. Jan Hafner – Univ. Hawai'i SOEST; Megan Lamson – Hawai'i
Wildlife Fund) and supported, in part, through the years by NOAA’s Marine Debris
Program.
Community-based marine debris removal efforts on the Hawaiian Islands of Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi, spanning 2013-2022, provided large datasets and documented remarkable variations in annual amounts of debris, mainly from abandoned, lost and derelict fishing gear. To test the hypothesis that the influx of marine debris on Hawaiian shores is determined by the proximity of the North Pacific garbage patch, whose pattern changes under the control of large-scale ocean dynamics, we compared these observational data with the output of an oceanographic drift model. The high correlations between the total mass of debris collected and the model, ranging between r=0.81 and r=0.84, validate attribution of the strong interannual signal to significant migrations of the garbage patch reproduced in the model experiments.
Learn more here.
Diver holding up fishing line that was cut free from the reef (Photo Credit: PWF).
Pacific Whale Foundation Reef Dive Cleanup
Pacific Whale Foundation's Earth Day activity took us to a common fishing spot off the coast of Maui named Keoneʻōʻio. There, we collected 469 lbs of lead weights, line, hooks, and other miscellaneous items. A local diver will melt down the lead weights and turn them into dive weights for those who helped with the cleanup dive. Mahalo to all our divers for safely removing abandoned fishing gear and more off the reef!
Learn more here.
Mariana Islands Nature Alliance (MINA) Partners with U.S. Navy in Beach Cleanup
Tank Beach, located on Saipan’s eastern-facing shoreline, was recently given a face lift thanks to members of the crew from the USS Emory S. Land, a submarine tender homeported on Guam. The team volunteered some of their vacation time and spearheaded the cleanup and, with the assistance of MINA’s Tasi Watch Rangers, were successful in removing a truckload of marine debris brought by the tides to Saipan’s coast.
In addition to beach cleanups and tree planting by volunteer groups during Earth Month, MINA was also successful in removing more than 15 tons of typhoon debris from one of Saipan’s Middle Schools located along the western coast of Saipan. This removal project is made possible through a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and NOAA.
Location and counts of eel traps around the Pacific (Photo Credit: Surfrider Kaua'i).
North Pacific Eel Trap Project needs your help!
The North Pacific Eel Trap Project needs your help in removing eel trap entrances (ETEs) from beaches of Hawai'i so that they will not entangle the Hawaiian monk seals pups currently being born there. ETEs become stuck on the snout of pups, keeping them from feeding. They are also ingested by whales and other marine life, killing them. Surfrider, other NGOs, and friends have collected more than 12,000 ETEs from all the main Hawaiian Islands over the past three years and are current collecting ~100 each month on Kaua'i.
How Can You Help?
- If you see eel/hagfish trap entrances on the shoreline, please remove them.
- To help us identify where the ETEs originate, please take a picture (top down into the funnel), record when/where it was collected, and email to hagfish@surfrider.org
Learn more here.
 Posters and DFG samples set up at the new Plastic Recycling Research Facility (Photo Credit: HPU CMDR).
CMDR Moves Into New Plastic Recycling Research Facility!
This month, the Hawai'i Pacific University Center for Marine Debris Research (CMDR) signed a lease and began moving into a new Plastic Recycling Research Facility (PRRF). Located in the Kalihi neighborhood of Honolulu, this 3,000 sq ft warehouse space will house CMDR’s growing Megaplastics Program, including the NOAA-funded derelict fishing gear Bounty and the Sea Grant-funded Nets-to-Infrastructure projects. The PRRF will replace the Kāneʻohe Net Shed, and will accept marine debris removed from partners on Oʻahu, Kauaʻi, Maui, and the Big Island, facilitating marine debris removal around the state. The PRRF is anticipated to collect, sort and shred up to 200 tons of marine debris per year!
Find out more information on Nets-to-Infrastructure and the PRRF here.
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