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Volunteers Nevaeh Howard (in blue) and Elena Beauchamp-Estrella (in red) volunteer on Kahoâolawe in February. With the ongoing pandemic, Kahoâolawe Island Reserve Commission has cut their volunteers making the trip to the island in half. Photo courtesy Kahoâolawe Island Reserve Commission
When the COVID-19 pandemic kept volunteers from traveling to Kaho’olawe to help with planting, the weeds started to grow.
The 14 staff members of the Kaho’olawe Island Reserve Commission tried as much as they could to spread native plant seeds on the island, but it could not match the level of plantings and seedlings that a large group of volunteers could offer, said Michael Naho’opi’i, the commission’s executive director.
Rescuers Manage to Cut Fishing Gear From Struggling Juvenile Humpback Whale Off Maui
Some line couldn t be cut from its mouth. We definitely helped it, said one of the rescuers. But it s worse off than we thought.
An emaciated juvenile humpback whale in the waters off Maui has a better chance at survival Sunday after a crew of rescuers managed to cut away much of the 100 feet of fishing line wrapped about its left pectoral fin and mouth.
Unfortunately, the crew was unable to remove all the line tangled in its mouth in the rescue mission last week. But the young whale swam better and moved more quickly after its fin was freed from a tangle of line.
The animal was entangled in small gauge line through its mouth and around its left pectoral flipper, which trailed as a pair of lines approximately 50 feet behind the whale.
A team of responders made several cuts, removing most of the line; however, a small amount of gear could not be pulled from the whale’s mouth and remains on the whale.
The recovered gear will be analyzed towards determining its possible origins and trying to reduce entanglement threat in the future.
The response, coordinated by NOAA Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary working with and under the authorization of NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program (Permit No. 18786-05) included personnel from the sanctuary, Cardinal Point Captains, Ultimate Whale Watch under the West Maui Rapid Response team, Keiki Koholā Project, and others.
Event still goes on but with trained site leaders instead of usual volunteers
Feb 1, 2021
Volunteers scan the ocean for any sign of whales in this image taken in 2019 during the Pacific Whale Foundationâs Great Whale Count. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a different type of annual whale count is underway this year on Maui and across the state as trained site leaders have picked up the counting instead of volunteers. Pacific Whale Foundation photo
The Maui News
Due to COVID-19, a different type of annual whale count is underway this year on Maui and across the state as trained site leaders have picked up the counting instead of volunteers.
The Whale Who Will Come Soon
A whale-watching trip is a voyage into the psychic dimensions of ocean in the 21st century
By Rebecca Giggs
The beachfront narrows to an ocherous ribbon, belted by blue, above and below. After a while, a handful of shearwaters appear in the air above the
Cat Balou. The birds flash around us; like knife-thrower tricks at a circus. Diving through the water, each is crowned in a diadem of bubbles. The shearwaters come from Antarctica, like the humpbacks, and also Siberia, South America, and Japan; they arrive in Australia, where they often die in large numbers from exhaustion. Such bird deaths, en masse, are known as “wreck events.” A single wreck event used to happen every ten years or so the result of irregular, rough weather overtaxing the birds’ reserves but flock-wide collapses occur almost biennially now, the feathered bodies washing up on the tideline, emaciated with hunger. Their prey are vanishing from the migration route as oceans warm.