EDITOR’S LETTER
On our cover, a honu glides over coral growing along the fallen structure of Māla Wharf in Lāhainā, near Baby Beach.
Our family spent many afternoons and evenings in that water when our three keiki, now adults, were young – sandy-haired, salt-crusted, kicking through the shallows as the light softened over West Maui. Back then, I noticed the turtle first. Most of us do.
The longer I look at this cover, though, the more I see the coral.
Old concrete below. Coral and algae growing across it. A turtle moving through habitat. Adult honu feed mostly on algae and seagrasses; grazers help keep algae in check, and currents carry coral larvae from reef to reef.
Most of us will never glue coral fragments to aragonite plugs, lower them back into Honolua Bay or monitor them under a state permit. Some care should stay in trained hands. For the rest of us, the first rule is the one we should have learned before the kids ever put on fins: don’t touch the coral.
In those days at Baby Beach, I thought of coral as part of the bottom – something below us, not something alive. A coral colony is made of tiny animals called polyps, many of them living with microscopic algae that help feed them from sunlight.
Coral can take only so much. Warm water, sediment, pollution and poor water quality all add stress. When stress builds, coral can expel the algae that help feed it and turn pale or white. The white is not beauty. It is hunger made visible.
The numbers from Māʻalaea are hard to dismiss: coral cover near one site was estimated at 50-75 percent in 1993. Later monitoring found about 8 percent.
This issue’s coral story begins at Honolua, where 246 fragments were returned after more than two years in nursery care by Maui Ocean Center Marine Institute. At Māʻalaea, the problem is in the water. Soil clouds it. Nutrients feed algae. Young coral runs out of clean places to land. From ʻOlowalu, larvae can travel toward other reefs.
In the water, care is simple: float above coral, keep fins and cameras off the reef, give honu at least 10 feet and skip the photo if it means crowding a turtle or stepping onto coral. At Kahekili, herbivorous fish and urchins are protected because coral needs animals that eat algae.
Watch what runs mauka to makai – from the slopes to the sea. A yard, condo landscape, parking lot, golf course or storm drain can affect a reef without ever seeing the ocean. Volunteers can train with Hui O Ka Wai Ola to sample water, or join the Marine Institute’s Honu Hero cleanups that remove debris before it reaches reef habitat.
Careful snorkelers can still see strong coral habitat at Honolua-Mokulēʻia, ʻĀhihi-Kīnaʻu, Molokini, Kahekili, ʻOlowalu and the broken remains of Māla Wharf when conditions are right. These places are beautiful, and they have rules, limits and consequences.
When I think back to those afternoons at Baby Beach, I remember children in the water, towels on the sand, the sun dropping behind Lānaʻi. I also know now that our love for a place has to grow up with us.
The coral fragments at Honolua now have to hold fast, grow over hard surface and make room for more life. We can’t do that for them. We can only stop making it harder.
Help coral by giving it fewer reasons to need rescue.
Me ka mahalo,
Chris Amundson
Publisher & Editor
