Mornings are quiet at Loko Ea. The pond is still, reflecting like a mirror the grass-covered banks and regal palms reaching for the clouds. The rising sun is still low, the air cool and weightless. A mile away, connected by a waterway hidden by decades of overgrowth, is Ukoa. This pair of loko puuone, or nearshore sand dune ponds, form a unique, spring-fed fishpond complex-Na Loko Ia o Waialua-that empties into Waialua bay. In ancient times these ponds were a bountiful food source favored by the alii (royalty), and they supported some eight thousand people. In 1813 a visitor named John Whitman documented his walk on Ukoa's stone walls: "Here we observed thousands of fish, some of which were apparently three feet long."
It makes sense that the ahupuaa (land division from mountain to sea) that is home to Loko Ea and Ukoa is called Kawailoa, "the long water." Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau described this freshwater system as "the long house" inhabited by the mythical moo (lizard deity) Laniwahine, who would swim to the ocean through a lava tube. According to lore, she was a fearsome guardian whose presence, caretakers say, is still felt today.
When Loko Ea staff arrive in the morning, they stand together and offer an oli (chant) in appreciation for this wahi pana (sacred place). Sometimes in the middle of the oli, says operations and education director Sayo Costantino, a breeze suddenly blows through, an invisible gust shattering the stillness. "It's this magical response," she says. "You can tell someone's listening."
Although Loko Ea is visible from the road as you drive past Maeaea (more commonly known as Haleiwa Beach Park), many North Shore residents are unaware of its significance. Not half a mile away, Haleiwa town is noisy with bustle. Extreme bass thumps from lifted trucks stuck in traffic. Visitors chatter while waiting in line for shave ice. Fishing boats and shark tours zip in and out of the harbor. At Loko Ea, though, the hubbub is neither seen nor heard.
"Once I walk through those gates, I breathe a sigh of relief," says Savili Bartley, a Native Hawaiian who serves as the fishpond's nursery technician, a.k.a. "the plant guy." He came to Loko Ea in 2020 following ten months of conservation work in Southeast Asia. Here, he says, he feels a sense of security and cultural connection. "No matter what happens at the pond, I don't think I could ever have a bad day. It's a mana [spiritual energy]-full state."
After decades of neglect, the pair of ancient fishponds named Loko Ea and Ukoa in Haleiwa, Oahu, have been cleared and restored; today they are again providing food. The effort has revitalized the ponds as well as the North Shore community's cultural cohesion.
"Once upon a time, before the idea of fishponds, it all started here with observation," says Malama Loko Ea Foundation (MLEF) co-founder James Estores, peering over a small concrete bridge into the shallow stream connecting the fishpond to the sea. "When the tide comes in, salt water comes in. When the tide goes out, the fresh water comes up." This ebb and flow, he explains, creates the muliwai, the nutrient-rich brackish water at the stream mouth. "Look at the fish," Estores says, pointing to dozens of baby mullet making their way from the ocean toward the stream as fresh water flushes out of the pond. "These pua amaama are herbivores. The green color you see? That's plankton, that's algae-that's growth. They want this." The fingerlings swim against the flow to find food, slipping through the grated makaha (sluice gates) and into the pond, where they mature. Conversely, when the tide comes in, the bigger fish are drawn toward the sea. "I have stood at each of these [gates] while water is forcing its way in, and the fish are knocking into my legs. They want to greet this new water coming in," Estores says. "When you drop the sluice behind them, they're trapped. Now you can selectively harvest and take just what you need. Our kupuna [ancestors] figured this out through the simple act of allowing the tide to occur. What is Loko Ea? It's an amazing testament to the oceanographer, the zoologist, the engineer and the sustainable way they created this place six centuries ago. Today, in 2022, we can continue what they started."
In April 2008 Kamehameha Schools, which owns twenty-six thousand acres on the North Shore, approved its community master plan, which included the restoration of Loko Ea. That May, Estores volunteered. Inspired, he convinced his friend, Hawaiian Steam owner Benson Lee, to join him for a community workday in June. Equally enthused, Lee returned in July with his employees, an excavator and dumpsters. "Can't get it done by hand," Lee reckoned.
In early 2009 Estores and Lee were having lunch after building a papohaku (stone wall) at the entrance of Loko Ea, when Haleiwa kupuna (elder) David Anana bestowed upon them a heavy kuleana (responsibility). "You see that?" he said, pointing toward Ukoa. "You need to open that up. That's why you're here. It's going to be a lot of hard work. You're going to learn a lot being in this place," Estores remembers him saying. But the most important part of his message came next: "All those things you're going to learn along the way? You share it. It's not yours. It doesn't belong to you." Uncle David emphasized the point by rapping his cane on the ground: "You. Share. It."
Later that year Estores and Lee established Malama Loko Ea Foundation, and in the thirteen years since, Loko Ea has been transformed. Removing vegetation was a colossal effort. There was a three-foot layer of fallen coconuts, a "jungle mess," Estores says, of invasive weeds and six-foot-high stands of California grass that had formed thick, floating mats. "We were on water and we had no idea. We were just going through with weed eaters," Estores says. "All of a sudden we hit something. Clank, clank. We kept hitting it. There was a catamaran in there!"
Not only a catamaran, but a telephone pole, car axles and more than thirty tires have been hauled out of the pond. The staff recently finished clearing the vegetation, and the pond has doubled in surface area. The banks are once again defined. Loko Ea is inhabited by amaama (striped mullet), aholehole (young Hawaiian flagtail), awa (milkfish), moi (threadfish) and papio (young jacks) as well as invasive tilapia and toau (blacktail snapper). On land the mala (gardens) produce kalo (taro), uala (sweet potato), vegetables and herbs. Ulu (breadfruit), niu (coconut), maia (banana) and papaya trees offer an array of fruit for the picking.
"I always envision the plate of food from Loko Ea. The fish-the protein-is from the pond, and all of our mala help to fill out the plate. All the colors, all the food groups, right there," says Costantino. "Within the aina [land] we have this ahupuaa system in a really condensed form-everything that will help our community live and thrive. There's nothing that connects us like food."
Before the pandemic, between five thousand and six thousand students and volunteers passed through Loko Ea's green gates each year. Once gatherings were limited, the staff quickly adapted their education programs, shifting their attention to the North Shore community. "We really had been focused on conservation-habitat restoration and education from a cultural-traditional perspective," says MLEF executive director Rae DeCoito. "But when COVID hit and we weren't able to receive people, we had to think, 'How are we going to respond?'"
COVID magnified the need for food sustainability, and Loko Ea provided a solution. Each month, with a handful of volunteers, the staff built an imu (underground oven) and delivered four hundred nourishing hot meals-kalua pig and kalo, turkeys for Thanksgiving-to local families in partnership with the North Shore Food Bank. "The imu effort really made us understand that our kuleana was to nurture the families and the youth, specifically in our community, engage them year after year and grow them into this place," DeCoito says. The staff, flexible and innovative, went on to design programs for small groups of keiki (kids), teaching them how to kilo (observe), how to fish responsibly and how to propagate and plant native seedlings.
During one visit a group of kindergartners helped plant aeae, a coastal ground cover that provides habitat for nesting birds. On a subsequent visit the kids were delighted to spot a clutch of endangered alae ula (moorhen) chicks, easily identifiable by their bright red-and- yellow beaks, swimming around after their parents. Over six weeks last summer Loko Ea hosted groups of third through eighth graders in an immersive, five-day program, Na Pili Wai Puke, that they expanded for summer 2022. On day one they learned how fishponds function and made their own bamboo poles. On day two they husked niu (coconut) and scraped the meat, which they used to make haupia (coconut pudding). On day three they visited the nearby loi (taro patch), Na Mea Kupono, where they harvested, cleaned and prepared kalo. On day four they dug an imu in which they placed the food to be cooked overnight.
The restoration began in 2009; initially clearing the ponds was a massive undertaking that required heavy machinery. Today they're maintained in part through community workdays, where everyone from keiki to kupuna (elders) pitches in.
Their families were all invited for the final day, when the students became the teachers. The kids could distinguish pua amaama from aholehole. Their sharp eyes caught sight of an aukuu (black-crowned night heron) perched on the bank. They demonstrated how the underside of ulu leaves is sticky like Velcro. They held silvery-green leaves of pohinahina to their parents' noses, extolling the spicy scent. Most proudly, they opened up the imu and shared the feast they had prepared. "I get filled with emotion when I see their faces as they devour the fish they caught," says aquaculture technician (a.k.a. "the fish guy") Andrew Tabaque. "Loko Ea refers to 'breath' or 'life,'" he says, referring to one translation of "ea" as "life, air, breath." "This place brings so much life to the people that come here."
The staff aims to raise a generation of stewards who will realize the dream of reconnecting Loko Ea to Ukoa. Currently MLEF is working with Kamehameha Schools to finalize a thirty-year lease and obtain a fifteen-year conservation license so that restoration of the tributary can begin. In the meantime, their next major project is to dredge Loko Ea this fall, removing the silt that's built up over the past century after Waialua Sugar Company diverted the water from Ukoa to irrigate its cane fields. A deeper pond will create a healthier habitat for the fish. Once that's completed, the walls will be rebuilt. On land, a two-story learning center is in the works, bolstered by a $100,000 donation for a site management plan from the Nakupuna Foundation, which also committed to covering half of the construction cost. In 2021, MLEF was also awarded $2.2 million in federal funding under the Native Hawaiian Education Program.
"So often we think of things that are old—Loko Ea is four to six hundred years old—as things of the past that we learn about because they are history," Costantino says. "No. We learn the history because it helps us go forward into the future-to feed ourselves, our families and our communities. These keiki and their families are restoring and catching and cooking and eating. Loko Ea is not a relic. It is alive."
