Sunday, November 11, 2007

Seaweed Super Sucker in Action off Ahupua'a 'o Kuliou'ou












On Wednesday, Nov. 7th - Eric Co, Kanekoa Kukea-Shultz, Jeff Sayre, Ramona Sayre & Linda Onomoto took the Super-Sucker out on the reef flats off Paiko Lagoon for some action. I was able to meet them when they came in later in the afternoon at Kuliou'ou Beach Park to help sift through the approx. 5 bags of limu that was sucked up.

There was approx. 72 lbs total of limu total sucked up from a 5 square meter area. Approx. 711/2 lbs of this limu was the invasive type and 1/2 lb was native limu. The native limu and small animals that were found in the bags of limu were put back into the ocean.

Eric - please throw in any comments you might have regarding (what I think was) the first outing of the machine in this area, on how the machine worked or the ratio of invasive limu to native limu found. See pictures above of super sucker machine and limu being sifted.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Wailupe Fishpond - Ahupua'a 'o Wailupe

Remaining on the subject of fishponds. Another fishpond in Maunalua Bay was Wailupe fishpond. This fishpond was adjacent to Wailupe Beach Park and located across from the Wailupe fire station. This area is now known as Wailupe Circle.

The pond was 41 acres in size and had a wall approx. 2500 feet long. The west side or Wailupe Beach Park side of the pond evidently had a sandy area. There were four inlets or outlets to the pond (makaha) on this side. The wall of the pond consisted of water worn basalt rock which was 12 feet wide. The inside of the pond consisted of sand and silt. McAllister - Arch. of Oahu; Sterling & Summers - Sites of Oahu pp. 274-275.

Wailupe fishpond was a larger pond than Niu's Kupapa pond. The channel and anchorage that exists to this day around Wailupe Peninsula was dredged in 1947 by Hawaiian Dredging and the material was pumped into the old Wailupe fishpond so that homes could be built on the fill land a few years later.