Originally published in Prism.
Restoring Hawaiian fishponds revitalizes food systems and cultures
RESTORING FISHPONDS AND TRADITIONAL FOODWAYS
PoePoe was raised in the traditional style of Hawaiian fishing: when he was young, older men brought him to the ocean to observe their practices. There was no talking, just careful observation and development of his own intuition, both of which are vital parts of caring for and restoring the Kupeke loko i‘a. In the Hawaiian language, observation is called “kilo,” a skill that needs to be honed over years of working directly with the land. It’s so second nature that PoePoe can’t exactly describe what goes into it, but he can say what he’s looking for.
He’s looking for invasive species like algae, gaps in the rock wall, and native fish swimming around. There are different types of loko i‘a, most of them built 800 to 1,000 years ago, but most have the same main features: a rock wall made of pieces of lava or other found rock, a gate in the wall that allows small and mid-sized fish to come and go but prevents larger fish from swimming out into the ocean, and a bountiful ecology of algae, phytoplankton, and coral—anything the fish might want to feed off of.
In 2018, PoePoe and his wife, Mahina PoePoe, founded a nonprofit organization to formalize the restoration of the Kupeke loko i‘a, one of many efforts across the Hawaiian islands to return the loko i‘a to working order. It was also a response, PoePoe said, to the growing grip of tourism on the islands, changes that climate change was bringing to the land, and lack of action in response to those pressures.
“The politics of the island seemed like we have to provide more examples on Moloka‘i that we mean business when we’re saying that we don’t want more tourism. We don’t want development,” PoePoe said. “We need more dirt on our fingers.”