 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Aloha au Inala. Welcome to Hawaii Is My Mainland. I'm host Kauai Lucas here every other Friday on ThinkTechHawaii.com. For the last ten years, I've had the honor of serving on the board of Manawua Fishpond Heritage Center. Loko'ia is the traditional name for native Hawaiian fishpond systems. My guests today are Loko'ia experts and fellow Manawua Fishpond Heritage Center board members. Chris Kramer is president of MFHC and all-around go-to man for the organization's activities and currently finishing a book about them. Brenda Ascension is the statewide Loko'ia coordinator for Kua'ina Ulu O'uamo, or CUA. Welcome you guys. It's kind of different to be meeting downtown instead of what our background looks like, which is around the ponds. So just a little introduction. Brenda, maybe start with you. What is statewide Loko'ia coordinator? Yeah, yeah. So this network called Huimalama Loko'i has been meeting since 2004. And then my nonprofit, Kua, which you mentioned earlier, we started facilitating that network in 2013. So there's about 40 ponds represented in that network. And basically, they just get together to learn from each other and share what they're doing. And Chris? Well, Manawua Fishpond Heritage Center is a community-based nonprofit. And it's really just for and by the community. So we have community workdays at the Fishpond, and it's really kind of reconnecting our community to our food sources over there. Well, I have seen you do everything from testify at DLNR meetings and the legislature to catching little fish. So we kind of do it all. That's the beautiful thing about grassroots. But to give kind of an overall idea of the activities, let's watch that beautiful video that Kua made, or was it Kua that made it? Yeah. I've been at this kind of game for almost half of my life, and it's been long time. Because there wasn't this kind of coalition. There wasn't this kind of supportive staff. There wasn't this kind of chance to bring others into the culture. But now that it's happening, it's very inspiring. It's not connecting people. It's connecting people with places. And I think there's one element that I think maybe we should adjust a little bit more. It's not just the physical restoration, I think. It's the spiritual, the spiritual restoration of this place. Hope is organic. Hope is evening. And with this hope that we have for our next generations, we can get along and be there when our mo'upuna and the ones that you have come. And now that I meet all of you guys and hear the stories and what you guys are doing and what we can do, I'm going to bring that mo'upuna back and share what they want. So we can get our job done, too. I'm very encouraged. A lot of hope for the future that David just said is really going to move forward in our culture and he's going to come back. All of our mo'upuna, all of our mo'liver, all of our cultural values is indeed in very good hands. And I hope I leave with you also a continuous bird of all of our leaky carcodes. All of them work together. It covers a lot of the real beauty and the community togetherness that happens around fish ponds that we all so love and why we're still showing up to pull weeds and dig invasives out of our areas. But we have a map from Kua, thanks to you, Brenda, that can you talk about kind of how it happened that these sites are now having community stewardship and kind of how that works. I mean, it's different for each one, but can you kind of give the... Yeah, yeah. So actually, fish ponds are interesting, especially the ones that are still physically existing today. There's a variety of groups and organizations and even just informal families and communities that take care of these places. So I think similarly, there's a real range of the capacity and resources that these groups can get together to take care of these places. So a lot of it is done as volunteers. Very few are able to get the resources together to have paid staff, but I think everyone is just kind of working at the capacity that they can and in that way, the who-y is really important for them to be able to support each other. And what do you think, as you've... How long have you been working with the local-y? I started as a volunteer at Haia Fish Ponds, where my work in local-y has started when I was in college. I was volunteering there. And I'm just lucky that I've been able to have this opportunity to work with the network. That's my job. So that's really fortunate. So what have you seen as far as the growth over the years? Well, now there's 40 that are being stewarded. What is the impact that you see happening? Yeah, even in this short amount of time, since 2013, some of the permitting systems have gotten more streamlined for Fish Ponds since the restoration work. A lot of people are making progress on their physical walls and so starting to think about other things like the availability of water that flows into their ponds or kind of the surrounding plant habitat that overhangs over the walls. So I think people are just starting to expand the work that they're doing at these places. Could you talk a little bit about why that permitting process was important? Oh, that was identified as one of the biggest barriers. As far back as the 70s, I think people have been trying to reduce the complexity and the burden of regulatory permits required to do this work to really revive these traditional food systems. And so as a hui, I think it also empowers them as a group to be able to advocate for those things together because those kinds of rules and permits affect all of them. For a while, there was a very serious time needed in years to get the backlog. Is that better now? Yeah, I think it is better because what that streamlining process did was it brought all of the agency folks together on there and to work through a parallel process to coordinate everything that they work through and everything that they look at when they evaluate permit applications. So it's kind of matured from them looking at Fish Pond groups like, well, who are these people? What are they doing right to seeing us as partners in taking care of the land? And Chris, so you're writing a book on... tell us about that. I mean, why are you writing a book on this? Well, I think it's... people don't really know about Fish Ponds or what they are or where they are. I mean, a lot of people live next door to Fish Ponds that are ancient Fish Ponds and have no idea. So there's a lot of room for education and one of the real interesting things is as things start to get... when there's a real need for food sources, people are more open to learning about Fish Ponds because that's a major food source. We have some of the pictures of the historical area where Manila Fish Pond Heritage Centers... we have two sites. We'll get into that a little later, but they're both in Manila Bay and you have dug up some really remarkable old photos from the 1800s. What are we looking at here, Chris? So this is looking on Kalanian Ole Highway in Niu and the big coconut grove right on the screen is right along the Fish Pond. Which Fish Pond? This is Kalau Ha'i Ha'i Fish Pond. And you'll see over and over Fish Ponds, a lot of times they're surrounded by coconut groves. You know, these are food sources. So that's another thing that as we're restoring the Fish Pond, it's nice to bring back other sources of food and resources along with the Fish Pond. And we have another one of also of our area, the historical one with the Halikiai. Do you have a sense of... do you know what the date was on this one? I think it's a little later. I think this is 1930s and you can see the great gates where the Makaha, where they lift up the gates and the fish from way outside in the ocean smell that fresh water and they head to that fresh water. And this is something that happened year after year after year. The mullet swim around the island on their migration and put in at each Fish Pond because of the fresh water that was inside those Fish Ponds. And then what happened to those fish? All their grounds were blown up and destroyed. So if you ruin the grounds, you're going to affect the fish. There's nothing for them to eat. And so they depend on that fresh water and the limu from that fresh water. So in that shot we just saw the ridge that we could see in the distance. That was the ridge between Niu and Kulio'o? Yes. Yes. So right where our two sites are basically. And that was pretty far out into the water. So do we have any sense of... Also, we have the largest Fish Pond in our area. You want to tell us a little bit about that? Sure. So that was something that kind of got my interest at first was when I learned that right in our neighborhood we had the largest Fish Pond in Hawaii and we didn't even know it and neither did Kupuna knew it but a lot of younger generations did not. So interviewing the last surviving Fish Pond keepers and learning from them and in turn trying to share what they have shared with our community and other communities. We're going to take a one-minute break and then maybe when we come back you can share a story from one of those old-timers. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lukasen with me today are Brenda Asuncion and Chris Kramer. Fellow board members of Manalua Fish Pond Heritage Center but they are both in their own right doing fabulous things in the local EO world. Chris is writing a book and Brenda is a professional Fish Pond keeper coordinator. For all the Fish Ponds. For all the Fish Ponds. So she's our network expert so we can know what's going on in other Fish Ponds. So our first Fish Pond that Manalua Fish Pond Heritage Center took care of was Kalaohaihai and we have some pictures. Would you kind of tell us a story about that Chris? So this is a small Fish Pond at New and this is where the couple system was broken on Oahu and if you go to this Fish Pond you can actually see out in the reef there's a big break in the reef and that's nearing the name of the Fish Pond and this is a real ancient site that had been damaged in the mid 1990s when they were widening the highway but this was last stewarded by Mr. Hara and very special man and we learned a lot from him and someone we tried to share his stories with the community and kids that come down. So we have a picture of the there were two houses there we saw the one that was Makai side but we have a picture of the inside of the Mr. Hara's house which has a glass floor and it's sort of a lot of people have heard of this place or seen it it's kind of weird when you just talk about it everybody, oh I know somebody this is now no longer there, right? Yes because as you can see the condition was horrible and we really are looking forward to being able to use the site now that it isn't a demo site and we have one more picture of Kaloha'i that shows what it's like now and I don't know about this particular group but can you share a little, Chris, about what kinds of things that groups do when they come? Sure, well yesterday we had Halalkumana and they were digging the Alwai and maintaining the Alwai that hadn't been maintained in a long, long time so that was exciting and Brenda actually brought a project and that was the floating pool onulas or the native plants that are floating in there and that really was good for vital remediation as far as sucking out all the excess nutrients and we could see a huge change in the clarity of the water after we put those in so that was the project Brenda brought and that project actually came out of Halulu on Kaua'i and that's an example of people innovating things in their places and then sharing it in the hui and it's spread all the way to Hilo so people use those pool onulas in Hilo also and yeah and it's cool because Chris and Kaloha'i have helped to teach the technique to build it and show other I have to say that's one of my favorite things about this as a learning resource is that the kids get to do real science in where it matters where it's like yeah we need this data whether it's water quality or species counts and other kinds of things right? We took what we learned from that project and we took it to Kaniwai Spring and we didn't have the hoop so we used old boogie boards from the side of the road and the native plants grew and two days ago there was a light ula which is a very endangered water bird show up looking from way up in the sky and saw this habitat so things like that even in a small area the restoration can happen pretty quickly once the conditions are changed So you mentioned Kaniwai Spring can you talk about that? We have a few pictures of that too Well this is the early restoration days and that's Alika winters and myself and we had some different folks from the community and this spring had just been covered by invasive mangrove and all kinds of so you couldn't even see the spring so after several years the water actually started to flow again and it's exciting to have our one of a few remaining springs in Honolulu that hasn't been covered or built over and now it's flowing clear fresh water and all kinds of fish come in to that fresh water and it's icy cold I mean it's beautiful you can see the gold on all the stones and that's the groundwater that came back so when that came back the stones actually turned color and it was pretty amazing to see that It is so beautiful so this is our other site Kaniwai Spring and can you explain what kind of a local ear that is? I mean it's not it's a spring Yeah so I think it would be considered kind of a spring that it does have its own little awai but then it feeds Kaniwai fish pond which is also inside Pykel what is it called Wildlife Refuge I don't know the official term so I think because probably originally it might have had sand, berm, walls it would be considered a buuone style wall but I've actually never seen outside like the far edge of Kaniwai fish pond so I don't know if there's a built wall there or not in the spring, yeah So have you been to all 40 fishponds? No, no No, there are a lot I haven't been to actually Well that's kind of cool because there's more things to do Can you maybe share one of your favorite stories about getting to work with fishponds and fishpond people? My favorite is just the hands on work when we're able to have an opportunity to bring people from other islands to work together I just love seeing people learning new things and then also the host group being so stoked that they're getting so much work done because they have all these skilled hands helping them it's really different than just a normal community work day where you have volunteers because other folks who work at locally have built up their own skill set and kind of can bring that expertise to new places so that's my favorite just the actual work What about you Chris? You're also a historian so you add this other whole historical layer to your whole fishpond experience but and also a former teacher so there's a lot of levels that you It's to me it's exciting to see you know, kupuna memories and you know, they're old timers that talk about it and then to see things reappear you know, so right now you can go to the fishpond and take one scoop and you'll fill a bucket of opai and we still have that but you go to a lot of places you can't do that and so just to see what was something that was the last several generations it just went dormant and now it's this big reawakening it's pretty cool to see and any any upcoming events Brenda, in the fishpond world or? Well, they have an annual meeting every year so the practitioners and the kia i loko can come together and have that regular sharing the thing that I really encourage people to do is just find the fishponds in their areas and get involved because a lot of these places have regular work days like how Chris mentioned that we do that kind of way in Kuala Lumpur a lot of places have either monthly or twice a month or every other month What's a good place, resource online to go to? I try really hard to update our calendar at KuaHawaii.org I think slash events other folks maybe maintain Facebook pages or kind of use social media or their own websites to inform people about their work days Okay, so there is a calendar on Kua It's Kua.org KuaHawaii.org KuaHawaii.org And Chris What are we going to do? 2018 We have two sites What are we going to do? We're going to get things cranking I mean one of the things I see too is these are community efforts but they're inspiring people in different agencies when they see the community taking the lead and the commitment then they want to assist and that's pretty hasn't always been like that but that's a big shift right now there's now the partnerships are starting to strengthen We have some pictures of the things that some of our visitors have done at KuaHawaii I love this one. Can you tell the story about like they get to paddle too? You know both of these fishponds are located on a busy highway so this is a much easier way to this is the water highway and this is the on their way to go through that break in the reef that gives the fishpond its name and This is from the Huimala Malokui they had their annual gathering in 2015 and at that time the fishpond was really ramping up their efforts to close the puka in their wall that was a result of a 1965 flood so you can see here that the damage from that flood created a really deep deep gouge in the benthic habitat and it was taller than me and this guy Kilii is tall too but you can see that they had to do really extreme work to rebuild the wall in that section so that's like a testament to the skill and ability of these people that take care of these places and where is this this is sort of more of the typical not the last shot, there isn't a lot of that but this is sort of what it is this is also in 2015 in Kohana I love this photo because it just exemplifies the kind of group mentality that is required when you take care of these places too, people can't do it by themselves and even though in Mauna Lua we take care of small places, we still need tons of people to help and I like how this photo exemplifies that yeah this is it Kaniwai Spring and I just had to throw this one in in our last couple seconds here because this is we have these kiki fishing days well a lot of them are catching their first fish I get excited just seeing them enjoy learning how to fish and they're also removing the invasive species and learning the skills from Uncle Fred has come from the windward side and he's making big fish traps you know it's really exciting to have all these experiences so if anybody's interested in joining us for our next one they should check out our facebook page Mauna Lua Fish Bond Heritage Center thank you both for coming downtown thanks for having us Kaniwai welcome