A daughter of the Big Island’s Kailua-Kona region, Cindi Punihaole remembers when the ocean was teeming with life. 

“My father taught me how to throw a net,” recalled Punihaole, now 74. “The sea was our ice box.”

Punihaole left the Big Island for college on the mainland and did not move home again for 30 years, until her aging parents needed her.

What she found on her return shocked her. Far fewer fish. A degraded reef. Resorts, golf courses, overtourism and urbanization — all of it pouring millions of gallons of polluted runoff into the ocean daily.

Practically overnight, Punihaole became an environmental activist. She committed to saving Kahaluʻu Bay, one of Hawaiʻi’s most popular snorkel spots.

Located about five miles south of Kona, the shallow-water bay features tropical fish, marine mammals, coral heads and clear blue water protected from big swells by an ancient stone breakwater called the Menehune Wall. In the Hawaiian belief system, the Menehune were small but skilled builders, who created structures such as fishponds and heiau — places of worship – in a single night. 

Seeing Kahaluʻu damaged by some 400,000 tourists every year was both heartbreaking and unacceptable to Punihaole. 

“People were stepping all over the reef without realizing they were causing a lot of harm to it,” she said.

In her work since then at Kahaluʻu, Punihaole has combined Western science with her traditional Hawaiian knowledge — a nexus increasingly recognized as a powerful tool in saving reefs. 

In coordination with the Kohala Center, scientists and land managers, Punihaole established a year-round visitor education program. Through multilingual signage and one-on-one conversations center staff and volunteers teach tourists how to snorkel without damaging the reef, identify coral and understand the cultural significance of Kahaluʻu Bay.

Punihaole also started a data collection program for water quality and fish abundance, and persuaded government officials to close the public beach park during the peak coral spawning seasons.

The work is founded on the Hawaiian principle of pono, meaning righteous and balanced, something ingrained in her since childhood. The beach closures are considered rest periods — rest being a Hawaiian value associated with mālama, the practice of caring for someone or something.

“Everything that my kupuna taught me is that the land is a living being,” Punihaole said. “When my father and I would go fishing we would only take what we needed.”

A Chance To Rest

What Punihaole saw at Kahaluʻu when she first returned from the mainland was the opposite of pono. In 2018, Kahaluʻu Bay had only six viable heads of cauliflower coral. 

Since then that number has grown to hundreds, perhaps thousands. Just last week, blue rice coral was spotted for the first time in a long stretch.

The Covid-19 pandemic had offered an assist. Visitor traffic to Hawaii dropped off dramatically, giving popular spots like Kahaluʻu an unexpected reprieve. Alongside the coral growth, fish species that had largely disappeared began showing up again, like akule — bigeye scad — and ulua, giant trevally.

“That tells you that if you give the bay a chance to rest,” Punihaole said, “the reef comes back.” 

Punihaole’s observations are backed by new scientific research from Hawaiʻi pointing to coral’s resilience and adaptability. Studies suggest efforts by citizen scientists and cultural leaders, combined with a vigorous regulatory crackdown by federal officials, offer hope for a path forward.

“I really see Kahaluʻu as a model for other smaller communities,” said Kathleen Clark, the Kohala Center’s coastal stewardship manager. “Kahaluʻu is guiding us.”

Advancing Science, Sustaining Culture

Former U.S. Navy deep-sea diver and special operations officer Greg Asner is something of a rock star in the conservation science world.

The ecologist with a doctorate in biology and 64-page curriculum vitae specializes in remote sensing — a form of imaging technology – to unlock the secrets of ecosystems and to reveal how climate change is affecting them.

Asner collaborates with Punihaole at Kahaluʻu and she sits on his board of cultural advisers for a coral nursery he started a few miles away, ʻĀkoʻakoʻa. By blending their approaches, they are forging a path to revitalize Hawaiʻi island’s reefs while training the next generation of culturally informed reef advocates.

ʻĀkoʻakoʻa in the Hawaiian language has two meanings: “To bring people together” and “to bring together corals.” Asner chose the name when he launched his Kona nursery in 2024 with $25 million from sources including the Dorrance Family Foundation and the family behind it, whose fortune is rooted in the invention of Campbell’s condensed soups. 

Located at the Ridge to Reef Restoration Center, ʻĀkoʻakoʻa aims to revitalize 120 miles of coral reefs off the leeward coast of the Big Island — the largest contiguous reef ecosystem in Hawaiʻi.

“What makes this coral reef system unique is not just the biology but the cultural practices that it sustains.”

Greg Asner, ʻĀkoʻakoʻa founder

Asner spearheads the project as director of the Hawaiʻi-based Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science at Arizona State University, in collaboration with the state’s aquatic resources division and other partners. But he leans heavily on the guidance of ʻĀkoʻakoʻa’s Hawaiian cultural advisory board. 

While his research includes hundreds of peer-reviewed papers laden with science jargon that goes over the heads of ordinary humans, in recent years he has turned his attention to something different, but related.

He’s still advancing science. But he’s focusing it to meet the needs of Indigenous communities, starting with his Big Island neighbors. 

One example is his research lab, which he located in Miloliʻi, a predominantly Native Hawaiian fishing village on the leeward coast that is rapidly becoming more suburban. 

Miloliʻi’s coastline is home to the state’s largest and healthiest reef complex and locals want to keep it that way. They successfully fought for the creation of an 18-mile, community-based subsistence fishing area in 2022 that strictly limits harvests and imposes other restrictions.

“What makes this coral reef system unique is not just the biology but the cultural practices that it sustains.” Asner said. “That’s critical.”

Last summer, Punihaole and Asner’s projects converged at Kahaluʻu for an experiment.

A dive team from ʻĀkoʻakoʻa collected coral fragments from the ocean floor — pieces that had dislodged from the reef by human activity or surf — and brought them to the nursery for research and rehabilitation.

Bathed in cool, clean water, the fragments flourished. Within four days, they reproduced, filling the tanks with some 200,000 coral larvae, which reef techs returned to the bay.

The experiment was a success: Scores of keiki corals, or babies, attached to the reef — and began to grow. 

A Sentinel Species

Asner’s vision for ʻĀkoʻakoʻa began to take shape years ago, after marine heatwaves caused major damage to Hawaiʻi’s coral reefs in 2015, then again in 2019.

The 2015 heatwave, the hottest on record in Hawaiʻi, caused severe coral bleaching in about half the affected areas, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By 2048, the agency predicts this will be an annual event across the state.  

If so, the impacts will be far reaching.

Coral reefs are considered sentinel species. These rainforests of the ocean support about 25% of ocean fish and other marine life. When something goes wrong with coral, it signals impending harm — a canary in a coal mine. 

Harm can come in the form of lost food, infrastructure or economic strength. Coral reefs provide seafood and other protein for billions of people worldwide; protect coastlines from destructive storms and flooding; and support fishing, ocean recreation and tourism jobs.

While that damage may be reason enough to protect coral reefs, some marine scientists are starting to move the cultural value of reefs higher on the motivation scale for the work they do. 

As Punihaole notes, Hawaiians equate coral reefs with life itself. That’s spelled out in the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant. It says that coral polyps, or koa, were the first live beings on Earth and that all other life descended from them. 

“The essence of life is the reef.”

Cindi Punihaole, Kahaluʻu Bay Education Center ReefTeach

Besides supporting fish and limu, or seaweed, that underpin the traditional Hawaiian diet, reefs hold deep spiritual significance. Hawaiian cultural practitioners often equate them with akua, or deities, and believe they possess mana, universal life force energy, according to ethnobiological researchers.   

“The essence of life is the reef,” Punihaole said. “They are our earliest ancestors.” 

Asner spreads the cultural message in high-profile public appearances and contacts with decision-makers and philanthropists. Measuring success by the number of coral that have been restored is a “fool’s errand,” in his view.

“It never works,” said Asner. “What does work is restoring humanity’s relationship with its resources.”

Punihaole’s ancestors subsisted off the bounty of the ahupuaʻa, the traditional Hawaiian land management system that runs from mountains to sea, mauka to makai. Ahupuaʻa offered fish and salt from the ocean, fruits, nuts and vegetables from farm lands, and birds and timber from forested uplands. 

It’s not just tradition, either. It’s a matter of food security for Hawaiʻi. If all hell breaks loose in the world and the barges that import up to 90% of Hawaii’s food can’t make their way across the Pacific and dock, the reef will still be there.

“It will save us if the ships don’t come,” Punihaole said.

The ahupuaʻa system collapsed after the Great Mahele of 1848, when land was divided up in private parcels. Later, the plantations and grazing transformed the land even more, followed by the more recent arrival of industrial-scale tourism.

Now, some species Punihaole remembers from her childhood are extremely rare.

Conscious of her advancing years, Punihaole is driven to reverse that decline for generations that follow her. Her strategies go beyond visitor education to address another major threat.

‘We Have A Problem’

The Big Island has some 50,000 cesspools, about 60% of the state’s total. These primitive human waste lagoons leak about 30 million gallons of raw sewage daily into the island’s groundwater and out onto its reefs. 

Punihaole is working with University of Hawaiʻi Hilo scientist Stephen Colbert to use dye tracer studies to document how — and how much — wastewater makes its way into Kahaluʻu Bay. The first test was done in August, followed by another in September. A final one is scheduled for this month.

“The data will show our leaders we have a problem,” Punihaole said. “I’m hoping we can get our Congress people to take a look. I want us to be a pilot for the conversion of cesspools.”

Hawaiʻi’s cesspool problem led to a law four years ago requiring that all such pits be converted to septic tanks by 2050. Cesspools allow nutrients, pharmaceuticals, viruses and other pathogens to enter the ocean via groundwater, weakening coral health and stimulating reef-killing seaweed. 

When Colbert and his team tested cesspools along Kona’s Aliʻi Drive, they found that the waste flowed through the groundwater and out onto the reef at a rate of 304 yards per day. 

That means from the time of flushing a toilet, the effluent reaches the shoreline in less than six hours. That’s twice as fast as previous dye tests done in Puakō, a shoreline community up the coast with a notorious cesspool problem.

Besides cesspools, the Big Island is plagued by aging sewage treatment plants that regularly spew wastewater into the ocean, and sometimes on land.

A top Environmental Protection Agency enforcement official described the island’s primary treatment plant on the windward side as the worst plant she had ever seen. Last June, an accidental discharge from the Hilo plant sent 607,000 gallons of non-chlorinated effluent gushing into Puhi Bay. The outfall lies near a summer campground used by Native Hawaiians who live in the Keaukaha and Panaʻewa neighborhoods. 

Several parents said their kids swam in the area that day, not realizing the water contained high bacterial levels until they heard it through social media.

On the other side of the island, which hosts Kahaluʻu Bay, the situation isn’t much better.

The main treatment plant on the leeward coast, north of Kona, is the subject of environmental litigation for not meeting federal clean water standards. It pumps treated wastewater into a hole in the lava where it seeps down into the groundwater, percolating to the shoreline at Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park. 

While the wastewater situation on the Big Island is staggering in scope, EPA has put Hawaiʻi County on notice that it must provide a remedy. 

The two sides signed an administrative consent order that took effect in March. It requires the county to repair and replace outdated equipment at four sewage treatment plants on the island, to take steps to eliminate cesspools, to rehabilitate miles of cracked and broken sewer lines and to expand the county sewer system to thousands of homes that lack access to it.  

It will be a massive public works project to pull off, but the EPA is requiring the county to come up with a financial plan. The agency offers some low-interest loan programs that could be tapped and the county could float municipal bonds or create a wastewater enterprise fund that collects customer fees.

Big Island voters recently chose a new mayor whose environmental management and finance staff will be charged with figuring it out. 

Surprising Results

While many solutions for helping coral reefs are known and simply awaiting on-the-ground action, scientists also are making remarkable discoveries about these highly vulnerable marine animals in their labs. And the news is good.

Much of the detective work is happening at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, on Oʻahu’s Coconut Island in Kāneʻohe Bay. 

A study the institute published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in September found that eight of the most common species of coral found in Hawaiʻi, and prevalent throughout the Indo-Pacific, can survive climate change.

The scientists analyzed how the coral performed under warmer, more acidic conditions and found they inherit about one-quarter to one-half of their tolerance through genes. That means corals’ ability to survive under future ocean conditions can be passed along to future generations. 

Co-author Christopher Jury called the results “extremely surprising.” Most past research has projected that coral would be almost entirely wiped out within the next few decades because they can’t adapt fast enough to changing conditions.

“This study shows that is not true,” Jury said.

But the research also found that none of the species could survive “business-as-usual.” Coral reefs have a chance only if local stressors such as wastewater pollution and urban and agricultural runoff are curbed and if global average temperatures rise no more than the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels outlined in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

That’s a big if. According to the United Nations, the world has already reached the 1.3 degrees Celsius mark.

“Reefs are not inevitably doomed.”

Christopher Jury, Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology Researcher

A similar study from the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, published in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that reefs are not inevitably doomed if appropriate action is taken now.

Those scientists created 40 “mesocosms” — tank environments that simulate what coral experience in the wild — and subjected them over the course of two years to conditions that mirror climate change. In addition to coral, scientists tossed into the tanks sand, rubble, algae and a variety of sea creatures to mimic the ocean environment.

That approach was novel. Other coral studies are typically shorter-term and don’t include as many variables, according to the paper. Lab experiments also don’t normally encompass the natural diversity of how species respond or how they interact with one another, all of which can affect outcomes.

Rather than collapsing under the stress of warming or increased acidification, the coral in the institute’s study held on — and formed new reef communities.

Jury was blown away. It’s clear that corals don’t face an automatic death sentence if humans follow the proven recipe: slash carbon emissions and cut land-based local stressors. 

“Reefs,” he said, “are not inevitably doomed.”

Engaging With Aloha

While ending climate change isn’t something an individual can wake up in the morning and accomplish, local actions ranging from using mineral-based sunscreen to not trampling on a reef can make a difference.

Those steps are conveyed to tourists at Kahaluʻu Bay, who often arrive outfitted with fins, snorkels, chemical-based sunscreen and zero understanding that coral reefs are living creatures, ones threatened by their very presence.

Punihaole doesn’t resent the tourists. She knows that Hawaiʻi’s tourism-dependent economy would suffer without them. 

“The visitors pay our rent,” she said. “They feed our families.”

As it turns out, Punihaole isn’t the only one who considers Kahaluʻu a hopeful place for coral reefs. The bay and her work there earned Kahaluʻu official recognition as a “hope spot” in 2022 from the legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle and her nonprofit Mission Blue. 

The group designates places around the world as critical to ocean health. Kahaluʻu is Hawaiʻi’s second hope spot after West Maui’s Olowalu, which scientists are considering deeming a “Super Reef” that’s exceptionally resilient and adaptable to warming, acidification and other threats.

Earle has described Kahaluʻu as a cherished place that demonstrates how people can harness their deep relationship with the environment.

“A beacon of hope and a source of inspiration for the community,” is how she put it.  

On a recent morning, some visitors sought out Punihaole and her bevy of volunteers for guidance or simply to talk story about the bay’s many attributes. Because Punihaole’s education program is grounded in the Hawaiian values of aloha and pono, she said she thinks visitors “can become part of the solution.”

While the massive societal change that Hawaiʻi has undergone and the ecological damage that change has wrought could leave her bitter, Punihaole says she chooses to look forward not backward. 

“We can’t blame anyone for yesterday,” she said as she walked toward the shoreline. “We start new today.” 

This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

Civil Beat’s coverage of environmental issues on Hawaiʻi island is supported in part by a grant from the Dorrance Family Foundation.