(ABOVE) Fair Wind Cruises' vessel Fair Wind II anchors in Kealakekua Bay for one of its daily snorkel tours.
The Dant family aims to set a high bar with Fair Wind Cruises. "A lot of tour operators have good intentions but don't see themselves as the problem," says Alex Dant, who oversees Fair Wind's day-to-day operations. "But it's our gasoline, our plastic water bottles and mylar bags. We need to make every possible change to minimize the impact we have."
“Just because it says ‘reef safe’ does not mean it’s safe for this reef,” says Dant, pointing toward the topaz waters off Kealakekua, where Fair Wind’s vessels anchor for four-hour snorkeling tours.
Dant's grandparents started Fair Wind on Hawaii Island in 1971, and for the past forty years it's been a family-run operation. Thirteen years ago, despite his father's worry that it'd sink the business, Dant switched to biodiesel for their vessels—with Dant chasing down tempura oil from Japanese restaurants before he found a distributor. More recently the company traded plastic bottles for reusable cups, and they encourage guests to cover up rather than lather on sunscreen, even if it is "reef safe." "Just because it says 'reef safe' does not mean it's safe for this reef," says Dant, pointing toward the topaz waters off Kealakekua, where Fair Wind's vessels anchor for four-hour snorkeling tours. But they didn't stop at these basic steps.
In 2008 the Dants invested in an eight-acre coffee farm about a mile from where their vessels dock and started serving their coffee on excursions. They also started a composting program, going from eight bags of trash a day to one partial bag—all while bringing as many as sixty thousand visitors a year to sensitive reefs off the Kona coast.
When COVID-19 hit, the Dants bought five additional acres to cultivate crops like papayas, bananas, sweet potato, jackfruit and ulu, or breadfruit, allowing them to do the unthinkable to their famed lunch menu. "We've gone from serving one hundred cheeseburgers a day to all plant-based food," Dant says. "This is not a small thing." Alex recalls the 70-year-old cattle rancher who was "not so cool with it at first, but before he left the boat he came to me and said, 'I did not want to say this, but I really liked the food,'" he laughs. "At moments like that you can take a breath and say, 'OK, at least we didn't do anything wrong.'"
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