NOAA Earth Day 2010
Maunalua Bay Reef Restoration Project – Maunalua Bay, Hawaii
NOAA provided $3.4 million in Recovery Act funding to The Nature Conservancy and in cooperation with community non-profit Mālama Maunalua for the project. This effort will work in Maunalua Bay, Hawaii to restore coral reefs through manual removal of invasive alien algae from 22 acres of nearshore waters. The restored hard limestone and sand bottom will enable seagrass expansion and coral recruitment throughout the bay. Pono Pacific Land Management, LLC, a local natural resources management company, was awarded the contract to hire 50 workers to remove 2,000 tons of mudweed from the most infested areas of Maunalua Bay over a twelve-month period.
When complete, this project will provide significant ecological benefits and transform existing small-scale community removal efforts already underway into a large-scale removal model. Local communities will experience first-hand how their efforts can succeed at a larger and more biologically meaningful scale, while also employing bay residents and engaging a larger proportion of businesses and families in stewardship of the area.
Though still beautiful, Maunalua Bay’s health is suffering. Once a thriving bay, today it is filled with invasive algae called, “leather mudweed.” As recently as 1988, large areas of the bay were clear and healthy, but today hundreds of acres are covered with mudweed.
Mudweed smothers shallow reef flats, killing off coral and native seagrass meadows. It also traps land-based sediment in the bay and destroys habitat for native marine life, from fish like parrotfish to invertebrates like octopus.
From the Event
Volunteers surround Andy Winer and Maya Soetoro-Ng at Maunalua Bay on Earth Day 2010
Volunteers work hard to remove the algae from the bay
Andy Winer, director of NOAA external affairs and special guest Maya Soetoro-Ng
A volunteer shows Maya Soetoro-Ng a sample of the invasive algae species
Soetoro-Ng presents an Environmental Hero award to Malama Maunalua
