Kahaluʻu Bay Begins Historic Coral Restoration Effort

A Dream Realized: Coral Restoration Begins Bringing New Life to Kahaluʻu Bay

Cynthia Punihaole, affectionately known as ‘Aunty Cindi’, was born and raised in Kailua-Kona. For her, Kahaluʻu was a place that fed her and her family, and was her playground. Growing up with the understanding of the interconnectedness between the land and sea, she was keenly aware of the changes in Kahaluʻu as she witnessed it degrade as it was more and more heavily utilized. Now the champion of the ReefTeach program at Kahaluʻu Bay, Cindi and her team welcome 400,000 visitors every year. The Kohala Center manages the ReefTeach program and Kahaluʻu Bay is the second Mission Blue Hope Spot in Hawai’i. With this large influx of individuals and the limited capacity of the 4.2 acre park, she has witnessed immense damage to the coral reefs she once knew and cherished. 

Now in collaboration with ʻĀkoʻakoʻa to restore the Bay, Aunty Cindi says her hopes and prayers for restoration have been answered by the partnership. In recent times, high surf events in the bay have knocked large pieces of Porites lutea (boulder coral) heads off. The pieces were left loose and vulnerable on the seafloor, unattached from their colonies. After discussing solutions with the ʻĀkoʻakoʻa team, Aunty Cindi and Lead Scientist Dr. Greg Asner came to the decision to rescue and restore these unstable colonies by removing them from the bay and placing them in the ʻĀkoʻakoʻa nursery for rehabilitation. Thus, on Friday July 19th, Aunty Cindi and the ʻĀkoʻakoʻa team pioneered a groundbreaking event for our program and Kahaluʻu Bay: ʻĀkoʻakoʻa research scientists from ASU and DAR, together with Aunty Cindi and her Reef Teach team worked together to pull viable corals from the bay, carefully wrap them, and bring them back to the Ridge to Reef Restoration Center (3RC). 

After being placed in the nursery raceways, it only took 4 hours for the corals to spread out their tentacles and look for food. After seeing this, Aunty Cindi knew she had done the right thing, they were truly happy. She says she could see and feel them in a place of balance, something they strive for when it comes to taking care of the bay. Aunty Cindi has always hoped and dreamed of an opportunity like this, something she knew in her heart that always needed to be done. She just needed the help of experts to fulfill her mission. For her, this event embodies all of her dreams for Kahaluʻu Bay finally coming to life, and it’s been a blessing to watch her prayers finally come to fruition. 

For many years, Aunty Cindi has been working to bring Hawaiian culture and Western science together in the Bay. Using the Kaulana Mahina (Hawaiian Moon Calendar) and collaborating with other researchers, Aunty Cindi and the Kahalu’u Bay team have successfully predicted the exact dates of spawning events in the bay for the past 2 years. As they predicted, on Monday July 22nd the Porites lutea (boulder coral) in the bay began to spawn. Hundreds of millions of eggs and gametes filled the waters, so thick “that you could not see anything around you”, she said. And on Tuesday July 23rd, while Kahaluʻu Bay continued to spawn, so did the corals brought back to the nursery. From the viable colonies collected, Aunty Cindi and the ʻĀkoʻakoʻa team witnessed an estimated 200,000 coral larvae form in the nursery, only 4 days after being removed from Kahaluʻu and in correlation with their marine colonies. 

The next step was to return these coral larvae back to Kahaluʻu, giving them the possibility to restore damaged areas. On Friday July 26th, one week after collecting the loose corals, their babies were returned to the bay in which they came from. Using the Pololia Coral Larval Deployment System prototype created by ʻĀkoʻakoʻa restoration scientist Dr. Robin Smith, the larvae were dispersed in specific areas, seeding locations that needed targeted restoration. This was another dream of Aunty Cindi’s that finally came true: seeding the bay with larvae, working with the right partners who had the knowledge and resources to do it. 

Not only was it a historic event to collect corals from this bay, but returning their offspring just a week later provides a model for similar methods to be implemented in other bays, resulting in a stronger, more flourishing coastline that can feed future generations. Aunty Cindi continues to believe that “the reef is the rainforest of the sea”, and this monumental week for Kahaluʻu is the beginning of a legacy to restore the marine jungle.