Nearly every weekend, Jay-R Kaawa boards a flight between Maui and Molokaʻi. The trips are not usually for work; they are for family.

Kaawa, head of Summer and Extended Learning at Kamehameha Schools Maui, regularly travels home to Molokaʻi to care for her father, who is living with dementia. At least once a month, she and her siblings help fly him to Maui or Oʻahu for appointments and support. Other times, she makes the trip to check on him, spend time with him and help manage his care. For Kaawa, transportation is not a convenience. “It is a necessity. We need reliable air transportation. Bottom line,” she said.

Her story is one shared by families across Maui Nui who routinely travel between Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Maui and Oʻahu for healthcare, work and time with loved ones. That reality is why many residents are paying close attention to Lānaʻi Air’s plans to expand service to Molokaʻi.

The airline, which began as a charter service connecting Honolulu and Lānaʻi, has evolved over the past several years. Originally created to transport visitors to Lānaʻi, the company expanded public ticket sales in 2024 and now markets itself as another option for island residents. Earlier this year, Lānaʻi Air announced plans to begin service to Molokaʻi, adding a second commercial air carrier to an island that has spent years with limited transportation options.

The expansion marks the latest step in the company’s growth. The airline intends to operate four daily roundtrip flights between Molokaʻi and Honolulu using their 19-seat Cessna SkyCourier aircraft. They have been promoting the aircraft’s larger cabin and accessibility features while emphasizing its goal of improving transportation options for residents traveling for healthcare, education, work and family obligations.

Kaawa flies home nearly every weekend and estimates she spends at least $220 on airfare each trip. Sometimes, she said, a one-way ticket can cost more than $200. “Just from an economic standpoint, having a competitor will hopefully bring down fares,” she said. While she considers herself fortunate to be able to afford those trips, she worries about residents who cannot.

“If one plane is out of commission, the whole schedule is messed up,” she said. Despite those challenges, Molokaʻi residents continue to find ways to get where they need to go.

“We’re resourceful in that way, we always find ways to make things work,” Kaawa said. Some residents catch rides on boats operated by friends or family members. Others coordinate travel with fishermen making trips between islands. For many, finding transportation is simply part of daily life. “We’re going to make do with what we have, but that doesn’t mean it’s right,” she said.

Accessibility is another concern. Because of his dementia, Kaawa’s father often struggles boarding smaller commuter aircraft. While he remains physically capable, navigating the tight spaces of a small plane can be difficult. “I literally have to hold his head down and crawl him into the plane,” she said.

At least once a month, Kaawa and her siblings fly their father to Maui or Oʻahu so he can spend time with family and receive additional support. While neighbors and family friends often help transport him when needed, she worries about the burden placed on others.

“I would feel much better knowing it’s a plane that doesn’t seem so cramped,” she said. For families caring for kūpuna and loved ones with medical conditions, the size of the aircraft matters. Many residents travel with walkers, wheelchairs, oxygen equipment or other medical devices. Others simply find boarding small commuter planes difficult. Kaawa believes a larger aircraft could make a meaningful difference for those families.

Maui lifeguard Kaipo Garcia has seen firsthand how important reliable transportation can be during some of life’s most difficult moments. Inter-island travel is part of his family’s routine. His sister lives on Lānaʻi and regularly travels because her daughter is undergoing cancer treatment.

“She flies every week because my niece has cancer,” Garcia said. Like many families living on smaller islands, they rely on flights to access specialized healthcare services unavailable at home.

Garcia has also heard stories from residents whose travel plans were disrupted by delays and cancellations. “They were missing their appointments,” he said. “They’d make their doctor appointments based on the [flight’s] arrival time and then delays would happen.”

The importance of reliable transportation became personal earlier this year when Garcia’s father passed away on Lānaʻi.

Living on Maui, he immediately searched for a flight home. His father died shortly before 8:00 p.m. Garcia was able to book a last-minute flight and arrive in time to be with his family. “I made reservations last minute,” he said. “At least I got there.” The flight allowed him to help carry his father from his bed to the hearse.

For Garcia, that experience reinforced something many Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi families already understand. Transportation is about much more than getting from one island to another. It is about being present when family needs you most.

Community members have also pointed to another reason they are optimistic about Lānaʻi Air’s expansion: familiar faces. During community outreach events, residents met airline employees who previously worked for Island Air, a carrier that served neighbor island communities for decades.

Many Molokaʻi residents already knew them. That familiarity, Kaawa said, helped build trust. “It’s local folks that we know and have seen frequently while traveling,” she said.

Some residents also see the airline’s hiring of former Island Air employees as a sign that local knowledge and experience remain part of the company’s approach. While questions remain about how the expansion will ultimately affect the community, many residents say they are hopeful.

No airline is immune from weather disruptions, maintenance issues or operational challenges. But for residents accustomed to limited options, another carrier represents something many have wanted for years: a choice.

“We’re grateful for what we have,” Kaawa said. “But we’re ready for another option.”

The post Molokaʻi is Ready for Another Option appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

What people often imagine as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is not actually a floating island of trash drifting visibly across the ocean. And despite the attention it receives, it is not the only floating garbage patch in the world.

Scientists have identified multiple large-scale marine debris accumulation zones within major ocean gyres – massive, self-contained systems of circulating ocean currents – across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans that trap floating debris over time.

There are no towering piles of garbage rising from the sea. No single mass solid enough to stand on. No clear edges separating these accumulation zones from the surrounding ocean. Instead, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a vast and constantly moving concentration of marine debris created by the circulating currents of the North Pacific Gyre.

Stretching between Hawaiʻi and California, the gyre functions like a slow-moving spiral, pulling floating debris into rotation and trapping it within its currents rather than allowing it to disperse.

Covering an estimated 1.6 million square kilometers, roughly twice the size of Texas, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains trillions of pieces of plastic suspended throughout the water column, from massive, abandoned fishing nets drifting near the surface to microscopic fragments nearly invisible to the human eye.

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Most of the debris, by mass, is believed to come from industrial fishing activity across the Pacific. Lost and abandoned fishing nets alone account for nearly half of the plastic mass within the garbage patch.

Our Kānaka worldview of Papahānaumokuākea has never changed through the centuries. These protections are just another layer placed over a relationship and responsibility that already existed long before them. – Brad Kaʻaleleo Wong

Other debris originates from countries and coastlines around the Pacific Rim, carried into the ocean through rivers, stormwater systems, shipping activity and everyday human consumption. Plastic bottles, buoys, crates, ropes, packaging and countless other fragments can remain trapped within the gyre for years, sometimes decades, gradually breaking apart under sunlight and wave action but never fully disappearing.

Eventually, many of those currents converge around the Hawaiian Islands.

As the North Pacific Gyre circulates westward, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands act almost like a comb, intercepting debris drifting across the Pacific. This marine debris regularly washes ashore across Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, one of the largest protected marine conservation areas on Earth and one of the most culturally significant places in the Hawaiian archipelago.

For Hawaiʻi, the crisis is deeply uneven. Although the islands contribute relatively little to the global volume of marine debris entering the Pacific, Hawaiʻi often bears the burden of cleanup.

The tons of plastic and fishing gear arriving on Hawaiʻi’s shores originate thousands of miles away. Yet local communities, cultural practitioners, scientists, nonprofits and resource managers continue carrying most of the kuleana for removing it from beaches, reefs and remote shorelines across the pae ʻāina.

Beyond Hawaiʻi’s shores, most of the world is oblivious to the Pacific’s plastic crisis.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Established in 2006 as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument under Presidential Proclamation 8031, the monument was formally given the Hawaiian name Papahānaumokuākea a year later.

In 2010, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its combined natural and cultural significance – one of the few places in the world recognized for both. In 2025, marine portions of the monument were additionally designated as Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Sanctuary, becoming America’s 18th national marine sanctuary and the largest within the National Marine Sanctuary System.

While the monument and sanctuary now overlap across marine areas of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the sanctuary designation adds another layer of long-term marine conservation tools, research coordination and public engagement within the National Marine Sanctuary System.

Larger than all U.S. national parks combined, it is home to more than 7,000 marine species, many found nowhere else on Earth. Millions of seabirds nest throughout the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, while endangered Hawaiian monk seals and threatened green sea turtles rely on the region’s reefs and shorelines for survival.

Yet even after two decades of protection, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument continues bearing the burden of a global marine debris crisis generated far beyond Hawaiʻi’s shores. Carried across the Pacific by ocean currents and trade winds, plastic garbage and abandoned fishing gear relentlessly wash into one of the most remote and protected places on Earth.

Ghost nets snag coral reefs. Plastic fragments collect among seabird nesting grounds. Buoys, crates and ropes accumulate along shorelines after drifting through the Pacific for years. Storms and shifting ocean conditions can rapidly push new waves of debris ashore, even after beaches and reefs have already been cleared.

The cleanup cycle never truly ends.

Much of that work now falls to organizations like the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project, a Hawaiʻi-based nonprofit leading large-scale marine debris removal efforts throughout Papahānaumokuākea. Since becoming an independent nonprofit in 2019, PMDP crews have removed more than 1.28 million pounds of marine debris from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands through extended cleanup expeditions across remote reefs, shorelines and atolls.

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Crews often spend weeks at sea cutting massive ghost nets from shallow reef systems, disentangling wildlife and manually hauling waterlogged debris from isolated beaches under difficult marine conditions. The work is physically exhausting and often emotionally heavy, especially knowing more debris will continue arriving with the currents.

But for many involved, the work is also deeply personal.

“If you love something, it’s really easy to want to protect it,” PMDP Executive Director James Morioka said.

Morioka said PMDP intentionally tries to approach the work through stewardship and responsibility rather than hopelessness. While marine debris continues accumulating throughout the Pacific, he believes local action, cultural connection and long-term restoration efforts still matter.

The scale of the work is immense.

Cleanup expeditions often require weeks at sea aboard research and support vessels traveling between isolated islands and atolls located hundreds of miles from the main Hawaiian Islands. Divers carefully cut massive ghost nets from coral reefs to avoid causing additional damage to fragile ecosystems already under stress. Crews manually haul tons of debris from beaches under intense sun and difficult marine conditions, dragging waterlogged nets across coral rubble before loading the material onto vessels for transport back to Honolulu.

Some recovered nets are eventually processed through Hawaiʻi’s Nets-to-Energy program on Oʻahu. Other debris is repurposed for education, research and art. Much of the funding supporting the work comes through federal agencies, particularly NOAA, alongside state support, grants and nonprofit partnerships.

But the labor itself often falls to a relatively small network of scientists, cultural practitioners, conservation workers, nonprofit organizations and volunteers who continue returning despite knowing more debris will inevitably arrive again.

And while larger debris can be removed from shorelines and reefs, the damage extends far beyond what is visible.

Plastic itself never truly disappears. Sunlight and constant ocean movement gradually break larger debris into tiny fragments known as microplastics, which continue moving through marine ecosystems long after the original objects have degraded.

Researchers have found microplastics in fish, seabirds, salt, rainwater and even human bloodstreams. Tiny plastic fragments have been discovered everywhere from the deepest parts of the ocean to remote mountaintops.

Within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, marine life bears these consequences continuously. Lost or abandoned fishing gear crushes and scours coral reefs as currents drag heavy nets across shallow reef systems. Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles become entangled in drifting nets and marine debris. Seabirds mistake floating plastics for food, feeding fragments to their chicks.

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Our endemic and endangered seabirds, Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles are extremely vulnerable to marine debris and garbage. Seabirds mistake floating plastics for food and feed fragments to their chicks, while monk seals and honu quickly become entangled in discarded commercial fishing nets that collect just below the ocean surface. These monk seals and honu were found and rescued. Others are not so lucky. – Photos: Ryan Tabata, NOAA; Richard Chen, PMDP; Andrew Sullivan-Haskins, PMDP

But what happens within Papahānaumokuākea does not remain there in isolation.

Ocean currents, migratory species and interconnected marine ecosystems link Papahānaumokuākea to the main Hawaiian Islands in ways that directly affect Hawaiʻi’s nearshore waters, fisheries and long-term food security.

Many species found within the monument travel throughout the Hawaiian archipelago during different stages of life, while healthy reef systems in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands help support broader marine biodiversity across the region.

For island communities, the ocean is not a distant wilderness. It feeds families, supports local fisheries, shapes cultural practice and sustains relationships passed between generations. Fish and marine resources are not simply commodities, but integral parts of daily life throughout Hawaiʻi.

As plastics break down into microplastics, those fragments can move through entire marine food webs. Small organisms consume them, larger fish consume those organisms, and the contamination continues moving upward through the ecosystem.

Researchers continue to study the long-term impacts of microplastics on marine life, fisheries and human health, particularly in island communities that remain deeply connected to the ocean as a source of food, culture and livelihood.

Today, Papahānaumokuākea is jointly managed through a co-management structure involving NOAA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the State of Hawaiʻi and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. In 2021, OHA was formally elevated to co-trustee status within the monument, placing Native Hawaiian representation alongside federal and state agencies in overseeing one of the largest marine conservation areas on Earth.

However, Native Hawaiian stewardship within the monument predates federal protections, marine sanctuary designation, and monument boundaries entirely. “Papahānaumokuākea is Hawaiian,” former OHA Papahānaumokuākea Program Specialist Brad Kaʻaleleo Wong said. “And it’s not a Hawaiian place unless you have Hawaiians involved.”

Wong spent nearly a decade helping shape OHA’s role within Papahānaumokuākea’s evolving management structure, working alongside the monument’s Cultural Working Group, federal agencies and state partners during a formative period in the monument’s history.

“The Cultural Working Group and community were so instrumental in making sure that level of protection continued,” Wong said.

Their advocacy helped integrate ʻike kūpuna and Native Hawaiian stewardship into the monument’s long-term management framework through initiatives such as Mai Ka Pō Mai, a Native Hawaiian guidance document developed collaboratively between the Papahānaumokuākea Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group, community members, and the monument’s co-trustees.

Rather than separating culture and conservation into separate systems, the framework emphasizes stewardship grounded in Native Hawaiian worldview, reciprocity and kuleana.

Science doesnʻt dictate our actions. Our values do. Our DNA carries memory. What we need to do is remember together. – Pelika Andrade

“Our Kānaka worldview of Papahānaumokuākea has never changed through the centuries,” Wong said. “These protections are just another layer placed over a relationship and responsibility that already existed long before them.”

For Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and Papahānaumokuākea Cultural Working Group member Pelika Andrade, the work of protecting Papahānaumokuākea extends far beyond conservation policy or marine debris removal. At its core, she describes the responsibility as one grounded in pilina, memory and cultural continuity.

“Science doesn’t dictate our actions. Our values do,” Andrade said.

While Papahānaumokuākea is internationally recognized for its ecological significance, Andrade emphasizes that it is also an ancestral realm whose meaning cannot be separated from Hawaiian identity, genealogy and spiritual understanding. For many Native Hawaiians, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are deeply connected to concepts of creation, Pō (the ancestral realm) and the continuity of life itself.

For Andrade, preserving Papahānaumokuākea also means protecting the knowledge systems and cultural practices that have long sustained relationships between people and the environment.

“Our DNA carries memory,” Andrade said. “What we need to do is remember together.”

She describes stewardship of the environment as an act of remembering. Not remembering in the sense of discovering something entirely new, but reconnecting to knowledge already carried through ancestry, lived experience and relationship to place.

To her, knowledge does not exist only within institutions, management plans or scientific reports. It lives within communities, protocol, moʻolelo and the ways people continue showing up for one another and for the environment. Caring for places like Papahānaumokuākea, she suggests, requires collective care rooted not only in conservation, but in relationship. It is a call to reconnect people to the environment, to one another, and to future generations.

That urgency continues growing as younger generations inherit a Pacific increasingly shaped by climate change, biodiversity loss, and plastic pollution.

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“The garbage patch is not sourced from Hawaiʻi, and a lot of it’s not even sourced from America,” Andrade said. “We could drastically reduce the trash coming out of Hawaiʻi and we would still be burdened with a global problem.”

And while island nations like Hawaiʻi contribute relatively little to the global volume of marine pollution entering the Pacific, they continue finding themselves on the frontlines of its consequences.

Papahānaumokuākea may sit in the middle of the Pacific, but fishing gear lost thousands of miles away eventually washes ashore on its remote atolls. Plastics carried across the Pacific from continental rivers and coastlines become trapped within the same currents moving through the North Pacific Gyre.

Yet for many who care for these islands and the life surrounding them, stewardship is not measured solely by whether the debris stops arriving. It is measured by the willingness to continue restoring shorelines, protecting marine life and teaching younger generations – despite knowing that the work may never fully end: plastics remain trapped within the gyre; nets continue washing ashore; and debris still arrives with the currents.

But so do the cleanup crews that return again and again. The people who choose to care for it and each other anyway.

The post Below the Surface: A Burden Washed Ashore appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

At the base of a lush valley in northern Kauaʻi, where rain clouds gather and rivers wind their way to the sea, is the ahupuaʻa of Waipā. It is more than a place. It is a living system, a reminder of what Hawaiʻi once was and what it can still become.

Long before visitors arrived with cameras and itineraries, this ahupuaʻa fed a thriving population through extensive loʻi systems nourished by ʻauwai, and ʻohana lived in deep relationship with the ʻāina that sustained them. Waipā was abundant, not in excess, but in balance.

Over time, that balance was broken. From sandalwood extraction to rice farming, the valley changed, and by the 20th century, development threatened this once food- producing land. Plans were in motion to transform Waipā into a resort landscape, reshaped for visitors rather than rooted in community. But Waipā did not disappear, even as the community that once lived in deep relationship with it began to be displaced.

In 1982, led by LaFrance Kapaka Arboleda, ʻohana from Kauaʻi’s north shore came together to oppose that future. They envisioned something different. A living learning center where Hawaiian culture, food systems, and ways of life could continue.

Alongside Kapaka Arboleda, community members including Cathy Kalehua Ham Young, Akita Harada, Harry Hoe, George Kaona, Samson Mahuiki Sr., Eddie Puʻulei, William Puʻulei, Dukie Puʻulei, Charlie Spencer, and David K. Sproat helped carry that vision forward. Others, including Gladys Brandt, Patrick Kelekoma Sr., Eugene Lum, Atwood Makanani, and Francis X. Warther, were instrumental in protecting Waipā from development and helping establish the Hawaiian Farmers of Hanalei.

They obtained the lease for Waipā in 1986 from Kamehameha Schools and today Waipā is one of the few ahupuaʻa in Hawaiʻi that remains whole and under a single steward.

The Waipā Foundation, established in 1994, assumed the master lease and nearly all operations by 2005. It now cares for more than 1,600 acres, managing the valley as a living system rooted in stewardship, cultural resiliency, and agriculture.

For Waipā Foundation Executive Director Stacy Sproat, the work is deeply personal. “We’ve always been entrepreneurial,” Sproat said. “But it’s always been about how do we sustain this work and still stay true to who we are.” She reflects on her life’s work as a blessing, being able to restore and sustain her community while continuing the practices she grew up with.

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Over decades, she worked alongside kūpuna leaders to help build Waipā as a place where Hawaiian community could thrive. Though those kūpuna are now passed, their work and knowledge live on across the ʻāina. There are more ʻoʻopu swimming in the stream, less damage from floods, the soil continues to improve, and there are abundant harvests from lands that were once overrun by hau bush. It’s also seen in the people themselves. Young people who were raised at Waipā are now returning as adults with their own keiki, maintaining that pilina to ʻāina.

Feeding the community through cultural practice and a continued relationship with the land remains central to this effort. Every Thursday morning, Waipā’s staff and community volunteers gather to process cooked kalo into poi, continuing a food justice tradition started more than 40 years ago by the Hawaiian Farmers of Hanalei. Today, Waipā distributes an average of 800 pounds of poi each week to kūpuna and ʻohana at or below cost.

Every Thursday morning for Poi Day, the community gathers to process cooked kalo into poi. What began over 30 years ago as a food justice effort has grown into a vital resource, with Waipā distributing an average of 800 pounds of poi each week to kūpuna and ʻohana at cost.

That same relationship is reflected in the weekly farmers market, where fresh produce grown in the valley is shared directly with the community. Food leaves Waipā not as product, but as nourishment for the community. Waipā hosts events like Eat the Invasives, where hunters, fishers, chefs, and community members highlight invasive species through a culinary experience that helps attendees understand how to manage them, and the annual Waipā ʻĀina Festival which brings the community together through locally sourced food, cultural activities, and local vendors in support of the foundation and participating entrepreneurs.

Waipā’s efforts have expanded beyond growing food. They are also raising future farmers and community advocates. The valley serves as an outdoor classroom, providing educational programs for schools, families, and community members. Participants learn directly from the land, gaining hands-on experience in farming, resource management, and cultural practices. Group visits and volunteer opportunities invite people to step into these practices, whether in the loʻi, helping to mālama the land, or supporting the local community.

Visitors and Hawaiʻi residents are also invited to engage with this land and its efforts through Waipā’s regenerative food and farm tours. This is not tourism built on extraction, but an invitation to understand.

“There are visitors who are our kind of people,” Sproat said. “People who come with intention, who want to learn, who want to understand.” Many leave with a deeper connection to the valley, later returning as volunteers, donors, advocates, and friends.

From the coastline of Hanalei Bay to the uplands of Waipā Stream, participants experience the full span of the ahupuaʻa. Along the way, they learn how traditional knowledge and modern tools work together to restore balance. Guides, many of whom are directly involved in the care of the valley, share how resources are managed and why restoration is both environmental and cultural.

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Looking ahead, Waipā is entering a new phase focused on strengthening long-term sustainability while remaining grounded in its cultural values. While grants continue to support much of this work, efforts are underway to build more resilient models that can support both the organization and the community it serves.

Waipā continues to evolve as a modern ahupuaʻa at a time when communities across Hawaiʻi face displacement and loss of access to land and resources. After decades of laying the groundwork, it stands today not just as a model, but as a living Hawaiian community. One that feeds its people, teaches its keiki, and sustains ʻāina through daily practice.

Here, culture and knowledge are not only preserved but lived through the work of growing food, caring for the land, and maintaining pilina across generations.

“It’s been such a blessing for me to be able to spend my life doing the kinds of things I did as a kid and bring our Hawaiian community back from the brink of losing our place here,” Sproat said.

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Health care professionals and representatives from The Queen’s Health Systems, HMSA and HPH provided trustees with an overview of the proposed consolidation and its potential implications for Hawaiʻi’s health care landscape. Discussion included possible impacts on Native Hawaiian health care, access to care in rural communities across the pae ʻāina, cost structures, provider networks and broader effects on service delivery statewide.

The proposed partnership would bring together Hawaiʻi’s largest health insurer, HMSA, and one of the state’s largest hospital systems, Hawaiʻi Pacific Health. Leaders from both organizations said the merger could help stabilize Hawaiʻi’s health care system, reduce administrative costs and invest more resources into primary care and rural health services. They also emphasized the importance of keeping health care organizations locally controlled rather than being taken over by national corporations.

At the same time, some health care leaders and community physicians raised concerns about the potential impacts of the consolidation. Representatives from The Queen’s Health Systems and other providers cautioned that the merger could shift patients and resources in ways that may weaken safety-net providers that serve vulnerable populations. Some independent Native Hawaiian physicians also expressed concern that the proposed partnership could affect access to care, quality of services and the long-term stability of health care providers who support Native Hawaiian communities.

During the briefing, trustees asked questions to better understand how the proposed partnership could affect health care access and delivery across Hawaiʻi, as well as what it may mean for OHA beneficiaries and the agency’s ongoing advocacy and policy efforts. Trustees also discussed the importance of ensuring that any changes to Hawaiʻi’s health care system continue to support equitable care for Native Hawaiians and other underserved communities.

The proposed merger has been submitted for federal review, and regulators will evaluate the potential impacts before any final decision is made.

Watch the discussion on OHA’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@OHAHawaii.

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That canoe, Hōkūleʻa, was built for a single purpose: to sail from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti and back, proving that Polynesians did not aimlessly drift across the vast seas. Guided by the knowledge of Satawalese master navigator Mau Piailug, that historic 1976 voyage helped reignite traditional voyaging across Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.

Today voyaging looks very different.

What began as a single waʻa has grown into many sailing waʻa across our pae ʻāina. Today, more than 20 waʻa travel Hawaiʻi’s waters: some large double-hulled voyaging canoes capable of crossing the Pacific and other, smaller canoes, that sail between our islands, train new voyagers and navigators, and reconnect communities to the ocean. Some cross the channels between our islands, while others have sailed the ancestral routes across Moananuiākea more than once.

Visitors to Bishop Museum can now experience that story in an immersive way through a new, interactive exhibit housed within the museum’s planetarium, Wayfinders: He Waʻa He Moku, He Moku He Waʻa, We Are One and the Same. The grand opening of the exhibit coincided with Hōkūleʻa’s 50th Birthday | E Ola Mau celebration during Bishop Museum’s “After Hours” event on March 14, 2025.

The exhibition celebrates the resurgence of wayfinding, the ancient practice of navigating vast oceanic distances using the stars, winds, and waves.

Created in partnership with ʻOhana Waʻa, Arizona State University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other voyaging organizations, the exhibit takes visitors on a huakaʻi to the past while inviting them to imagine the future of voyaging.

The exhibit is especially meaningful for Bishop Museum, as it shares the history of Nainoa Thompson’s early training in celestial navigation inside the museum’s planetarium under the guidance of Will Kyselka, a former lecturer at the planetarium, which helped shape the revival of traditional navigation in Hawaiʻi.

Inside the planetarium lobby, the exhibit surrounds visitors with the sights, sounds, and moʻolelo of captains, navigators, and voyagers whose journeys would not have been possible without the ʻike of their kumu and ancestors.

Several interactive experiences in the circular space bring the practice of wayfinding to life. Visitors can explore the “Hall of Teachers,” which shares the stories of key figures who helped revive traditional navigation; steer a digital Hōkūleʻa using a star compass through Kilo Hōkū; or recreate the calls of seabirds used by navigators through Kani Nā Manu.

Guests are also invited to kilo the ocean: observing how waves move across open water, browsing a curated library on navigation, and watching interviews with cultural practitioners and crew members who share their journeys and explain how they mālama our waters. Through these activities, visitors will gain a deeper understanding of the awareness, observation, and discipline required to guide a waʻa across the Pacific.

The Wayfinders Exhibit was created by Bishop Museum exhibit designer Michael Wilson who is also a Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) crew member. Wilson worked closely with his PVS mentors, navigators Kaʻiulani Murphy and Bonnie Kahapea- Tanner, both of whom helped curate the exhibit and have sailed Moananuiākea aboard Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia.

Together, the team translated the rich history and complex knowledge of voyaging into an interactive experience that blends science, storytelling, and ʻike Hawaiʻi to demonstrate how Pacific voyagers navigated Earth’s largest ocean.

The exhibit emphasizes the vast repository of ʻike that lives within the practice of wayfinding; it is science, it is observation, but above all, it is pilina to our environment.

Those who guide waʻa must build intimate relationships with the natural world, learning to understand the language of the ocean, the songs of the wind, and the writings in the skies. That knowledge cannot be rushed. It develops over years of mentorship, practice, and time spent at sea. Those journeys are never taken alone.

The exhibit also honors the elders and kumu who helped revive these voyaging traditions including Mau Piailug, Herb Kāne, and Ben Finney, along with the many kumu who sailed unfamiliar waters so that others could follow. And it highlights inspirational captains such as Chad Paishon, Billy Richards, and Bruce Blankenfield whose leadership continues to guide crews at sea and inspire the next generation of voyagers.

Today, as more voyaging canoes sail throughout Hawaiʻi and across the Pacific, this tradition continues to evolve.

Communities across the islands are building waʻa, training new voyagers and navigators, and reacquainting themselves with the ocean pathways that once linked the island nations of Moananuiākea.

The Wayfinders Exhibit captures the spirit of our voyaging renaissance – a reminder that our culture is alive – not something frozen in the past.

As our islands and people sail toward destinations both familiar and unknown, the challenge is to ensure that our stories, culture, and knowledge continue to live on so that future generations – like the generations of navigators who crossed Moananuiākea before us – will continue to find their way, guided by the stars, the ocean and the ʻike of those who came before.

“Wayfinders: He Waʻa He Moku, He Moku He Waʻa, We Are One and the Same” is at the Bishop Museum planetarium and admission is included with general museum admission. More information about exhibit hours, tickets, and showtimes can be found at bishopmuseum.org.

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