Kuaihelani is a place with many moods that can change in an instant. We woke up to high winds and dark cloudy skies. It brought a dramatic intensity to the island that settled into our bones. Still, the team moved with focus. Through the bitingly cold winds, we launched our boats into choppy waters and crossed the channel to Eastern Island.
A year ago, we walked the same shores, restoring them to their pristine, natural state. It’s a weird, disheartening feeling to come back to the same place and find it looking as if you had never been there. The time between our visits brought in plastic pollution from all over the world. We may never know their origin, but if you examine a piece closely you can get clues as to where it came from and what it’s been through. On a given item, you may find an array of languages and logos. This can help indicate what country or region it’s from. You can learn how long it’s been in the ocean by looking for calcification growth, sun-bleached brittleness, or, if you’re lucky, an expiration date. There are stories etched into this debris – bite marks from turtles, sharks, or fish that encountered these objects long before they reached Kuaihelani.
Today, Eastern Island was lined with the usual suspect plastics: nets, buoys, baskets, bottles, caps, and toothbrushes. We elected to stay on the protected, western lagoon side of the island to shield us from the winds. We spanned across the beach, working in a steady, deliberate formation. The people in the front of the pack gravitate towards the large items that catch your eye, muscling along with a string of buoys or nets draped across your shoulders. These items can damage habitat and entangle wildlife. Those in the back arguably have the harder job: combing for the small items like fragments and bottle caps. Itʻs meticulous, often overlooked work, but it matters deeply. The small plastic pieces are perfectly bite-sized for the surrounding wildlife. We’re here to protect this place and we want to see it through the best we can.
As the day wore on, the clouds softened and the sun broke through in fleeting moments, warming us just enough. The wind, once biting, became a welcome companion—cooling us as we trekked across the expansive island. We covered a lot of ground and found our stride.
Returning to a once-again littered beach, this work can feel cyclical, even endless. Still, every piece we remove is one less pollutant in the ocean, one less threat to wildlife. And that is enough to keep us moving forward – one shoreline, one handful, one day at a time.
Lauren Fraser & the PMDP crew