Happy World Oceans Day 2009

[rgbmatt]

The reefs I've dove out of Maunalua Bay were atrocious compared to ANYTHING I've seen off Maui. And those Oahu reefs were so far off shore compared to our shore-diving reefs on Maui... there's a bigger problem in effect over there!

Serious? There are some very nice spots in Maunalua Bay (and the rest of Oahu), and some rather plain spots on Maui that I was not impressed with but seemed pretty popular with the local divers. I suspect that both of us haven't had enough experience with each other's islands.

It is true that most of our reef (in scuba diving range) is quite far out. This is due to the island's geology - in Maunalua Bay for instance there are 500 yards of sand flats before you even get to the fringing reef, and it's 3/4 miles from shore before you hit 30'. Off Ewa Beach you can go a mile and a half and it'll still be 20' deep in spots. Consequently, shore diving is not as much of an option here as it is on Maui and most people never get to visit the really nice areas.

We do have problems with invasive algae in certain areas, but it's fairly limited. What we don't have are the huge piles of algae that drift up on shore in Kihei. That's nuts!

I suspect the biggest difference is some of the Maui County treehuggers abilities to blow stuff out of proportion. I admit, there is algae (and probably more than should be) on our reefs... but look at what happened with the Superferry, etc. as an example of our over-zealous treehuggers here.

Indeed. The "boy who cried wolf" comes to mind.

This is exactly like the superferry thing - some people have a gripe about something and decide that a lawsuit is the best solution to shut it down. Which makes it very difficult for people to make real progress when these issues come up.

Let's say the county stopped injection wells today. What would they do with all the waste and reclaimed water?? It would become a big problem on land real quick, wouldn't it?

People don't think these things all the way through.