Hawaiian birds are losing their songs

Three species of honeycreeper now sing much more similar songs, as their populations decline.

The sounds of Kauai’s forests are changing. Thirty years ago, David Kuhn could hear a dawn chorus and identify the many different birds that lived on the Hawaiian island. But more recently, Kuhn, a wildlife recordist based on Kauai, began noticing that not only are the forests becoming quieter, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the remaining birds apart by their songs.

Investigating further, in 2014 he recorded a native honeycreeper, an akekee, singing the songs of other endangered honeycreeper species. “That confirmed my confusion up to that point,” Kuhn says. “I thought, what the heck, these guys are starting to sound alike.”

Kuhn’s discovery prompted research into the plight of three of Kauai’s six remaining honeycreeper species: the anianiau, the Kauai amakihi, and the akekee. His hunch was correct—the three species now sing much more similar songs, with less complex vocal signals, due to the decreasing size of their populations, especially among mature birds that pass on song repertoires to younger offspring. To researchers’ knowledge, it’s the first time this type of behavior among endangered birds has been recorded, says Kristina Paxton, lead author of a paper on honeycreepers published last year in the journal Royal Society Open Science, and a postdoctoral researcher in the department of biology at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

DAI MAR TAMARACK / SHUTTERSTOCK

There is far more at stake than the loss of beautiful songs. Birdsong plays an important role in mate attraction and selection, communication about food resources and predators, and the selection of breeding territories. The disappearance of songs can reduce the ability of bird populations to reproduce and survive, making life even more precarious for endangered forest birds like those on Kauai.

The songs are culturally transmitted—learned from parents and other birds in the environment where young birds are maturing. But if young birds don’t hear songs, they won’t learn them, and the lack of repertoire could create problems when it’s time to find a partner and reproduce. “I don’t think we often think about these behaviors that are also really critical to the survival of the species, and how the loss of those could also be a compounding effect of population loss,” Paxton says.

Paxton gathered sound files spanning 40 years from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as well as her own recordings and those from Kuhn and Justin Hite, another of the paper’s authors, to analyze the acoustic characteristics of honeycreeper songs over time, such as how long they lasted, how many syllables (very brief repeated song elements) they contained, frequency changes, and note range. Beginning in the early 2000s and through to 2017, the songs’ variety and complexity significantly decreased. Not only are the three honeycreepers singing the same songs, but the songs contain fewer syllables, fewer notes within those syllables, and fewer frequency changes.

Paxton’s experience in the Kauai forest echoes Kuhn’s. She has spent 20 minutes following male anianiaus and akekees without hearing a single song. She believes that is because they have no reason to sing out a predator warning or a mating call if there’s no one around to hear. “If your territories are so far apart, and there’s so few birds, why vocalize out to the birds around you?” she says.

Six of the seven birds native to Kauai’s forests are in a state of precipitous decline. Twenty-five years of population data show dramatic decreases among honeycreepers—57 percent for the anianiau, 91 percent for the Kauai amakihi, and 98 percent for the akekee in their home ranges between 2000 and 2012 alone. The birds have been pushed to small forested areas; the akekee and akikiki (another endangered honeycreeper) are now only found in very small ranges in remote areas of the Alakai Plateau, spanning the central to northwest region of the island.

The losses are linked to a variety of factors, including climate change, invasive flora, and non-native animals, including introduced birds, some of which were imported in the early 20th century to replace endangered native species, thus hastening further decreases. “There was a really large decline in birds, and people decided to bring in their favorite birds from Europe and other places to be able to hear a morning chorus,” Paxton says.

Non-native birds also brought avian malaria. Once mosquitoes were accidentally introduced, malaria was vectored to native bird species, which have not developed the resistance that non-native birds have. Their one defense was to move to forests in higher elevations where it was too cool for mosquitoes to survive. But even that is no longer a secure redoubt—the warming climate means mosquitoes and diseases are surviving there, too.

An interesting result of Paxton’s honeycreeper research is that it documents the loss of both population and cultural diversity—the different socially learned behaviors unique to different animal groups—says Alison Greggor, a postdoctoral research associate at San Diego Zoo Global’s Institute for Conservation Research, who wasn’t involved in the study. The research “shows that there are fewer distinct families reproducing” because the young “would learn their songs from their parents,” she says.

The loss of cultural diversity can impact a species’ chances of survival, which is particularly important in the face of climate change, says Adolfo Cordero-Rivera, a professor of ecology at the University of Vigo in Spain, who coined the term ethodiversity for animal populations to encompass the diversity of behaviors that are culturally transmitted, originate genetically, or are learned individually. “We don’t know how the environment will change in the future, and which kind of behaviors will be useful when the environment changes.”

At the moment, the survival of the Kauai honeycreepers and other highly endangered birds may depend on captive breeding programs. But cultural behaviors, like songs and foraging skills, haven’t yet been incorporated into many of those programs, Greggor says. “The behavior of animals in conservation breeding facilities before they’re being introduced into the wild is something that is gaining more attention,” she says. “Previously, people would put animals out and then maybe come back six months later and say, ‘Oh, there are this many still alive.’”

But that approach may be changing. A captive breeding program for the akekee and akikiki at San Diego Zoo Global’s Keauhou Bird Conservation Center uses recorded Kauai soundscapes as part of their prerelease training.

In other programs, mature birds are used to train young birds in cultural behaviors before they’re released into the wild, providing parental rearing instead of the usual hand rearing by humans. The benefits are important, Greggor says, because many birds have a critical period when they learn vocalizations and need to hear and see a tutor to learn and make the connection between sound and behavior.

Some birds need that training very early. Greggor points to evidence that some bird species begin learning even before they’ve hatched. “As soon as their ears start developing, they’re listening for the sounds that are going on around their nest,” she says. “Right after that they can already discriminate between what they’ve been exposed to and what they haven’t been.”

This shows that the natural diversity of birdsong is culturally learned, instead of innate, she says, which is also supported by other recent research.

One thing is certain: Once cultural behaviors are lost in a given species, they can take a long time to restore. Research analyzing the migration patterns of reintroduced bighorn sheep and moose found that it took several decades before they rediscovered the traditional routes that followed seasonally available food.

For Kauai’s honeycreepers and other native birds, recent research has identified a suite of approaches to stem their losses, including the introduction of genetically modified mosquitoes (a subject of some debate), preserving habitat, reforestation, predator control, and translocations.

But in the end, the captive-bred honeycreepers will need to learn the songs that will allow them to successfully repopulate their territories. “When we lose these songs, we’re losing part of what makes up the Hawaiian forest,” Paxton says.

(Source: The Atlantic)

This Hawaiian storytelling chant is great literature without the written word

The oli connects me to my childhood, and to the history of indigenous Hawaii, writes Wailana Kalama on Electric Lit. Read on: 

When I was much younger, every autumn I would join my mother and other healers from the Hawaiian cultural tradition to celebrate Makahiki, commonly known as the Hawaiian New Year. We collected at the ruins of an ancient fishing village on the Big Island. The once-thriving settlement is outlined by walls of lava rocks, tattered grasses, and maʻo, Hawaiian cotton trees. At each turn of the New Year, we would gather for a few days, to close the work of the last year, and open the work of the year ahead. We would prepare special meals, sing old melodies, build grass-roofed huts, and pray to welcome the coming year. Such a ceremony has been held there for centuries.

During the opening ceremonies, everyone gathered at the shoreline to the call of the pu or conch shell. We prayed, we sang songs, to honor the place and the coming year. At one point, my mother would walk to the water’s edge, standing on a raised gravel platform, the paepae. From her abdomen, deep vibrations rumbled, and were carried up into the wind: a chant, the oli. The chant is to acknowledge the presence of the elements, living things past and present, to give thanks and to gather strength for the year ahead. It is to mark the place of threshold where we stand.

The oli is an indigenous Hawaiian chant. It’s usually performed alone, unaccompanied by musical instruments or dance. Rhythm begins and ends with the chanter, who controls her voice through balance, repetition, and metaphor.

The purpose behind an oli varies. Sometimes, it’s an invitation. Sometimes, a story about bygone times, to honor chiefs or a special place. Other times, an announcement. The oli is usually chanted at a time or place of threshold, such as when entering a new location, or a rite of passage like a wedding.

It is a way to honor the listeners, to give respect, but also to deliver your emotion, your purpose. This is who I am, this is what I intend. When travelers enter a new space, they chant for permission, declaring their identity and their intentions there. In old days, before Captain Cook’s arrived to Hawaiian shores, as voyagers would arrive at a distant island by canoe, they would chant an oli to introduce themselves. A second chanter would traditionally be on the land, to receive them with an oli in response.

The oli is a way to honor the listeners, to give respect, but also to deliver your emotion, your purpose. This is who I am, this is what I intend.

My uncle and aunt live on a small beach on the west coast of the Big Island. Between the white coral sidewalks and broken pavement, it is a challenge to navigate; our car often pulled askew. So my mother and I walk along the coral-strewn shoreline. Stray dogs whine from behind screened doors. At the border between Kahauloa and Keei, we suddenly stop. My mother’s voice lifts, carried by the wind from her abdomen, up to the sky, and down again. Months would have passed since our last visit, and the chant was necessary to gain permission to enter. There is no one we can see who can hear us, yet we know the place listens.

“Experience — personal, familial, national — is the natural source of orature,” writes Haunani-Kay Trask in her article “Decolonizing Hawaiian Literature.” “The immediate experience shared by creator and listener but also the collective experience of the poʻe, the lahui, the nation.”

How the oli is delivered largely depends on its intended purpose. The rapidity, drama, pitch, and vibration are all elements that fluctuate by circumstance. Often, each prolonged phrase will be chanted in one breath. There are many variations on style. Lengthy chants, such as prayers, are usually delivered in rapid, rhythmic kepakepa style without sustained pitch. Olioli uses sustained pitch, with a touch of ʻiʻi, a trill-like vibrato tapering the end of each phrase, whereas the hoʻāeae style is very melodic, with short drawn-out vowels and heavy use of ʻiʻi vibrato phrases. Then there are the laments, ho‘ouwēuwē, which uses a heavy voice with protracted vowels, and the genealogical chants, koihonua, which employs distinctly pronounced words. Because anyone can potentially compose a chant, they vary between regions, schools, and individuals.

A Hawaiian reverend blows on a pu before chanting the oli. (Photo via Air Force Medical Service)

How the oli is delivered largely depends on its intended purpose. The rapidity, drama, pitch, and vibration are all elements that fluctuate by circumstance.

I have never heard as powerful a voice as my aunt’s. I remember her chanting oli at weddings, at funerals, at Makahiki. She would stand draped in kikepa, a traditional wrap cloth covering one shoulder, decorated with inked designs made with ohe, bamboo stamps she had carved herself. When she began a chant, it was as if the Earth itself shook inside her abdomen. Her voice said strength, love, connection. It was a gift. Everyone who heard it was united by the sound, as if vibrations linked us all together. I would close my eyes, and hear the waves undulating, and it was as if all the Earth felt this one emotion.

When you’ve been away from home for a while, as I have, sometimes the only memories that have any color or reality come from your childhood.

I remember my grandfather’s funeral as if it were only a few months ago. When he passed away, his four children came together to write a family chant of our own. It was a way to honor him, his memory. To assure him (and ourselves) that the wisdom of our clan would carry on through generations. At his funeral, his children and grandchildren lifted their voices in his honor. Here we are, and we will continue. Our voices reverberated in the church halls and every face on my relatives sitting in the pews was painted in joy.

Written language didn’t come to the Hawaiian Islands until the 1820s. Before then, our oral-based storytelling tradition was almost the only way Hawaiians could stay connected to our history, genealogy, folklore. These oli were passed from generation to generation. There was even a class of professionals known as haku mele, skilled in the art of ‘apo: the ability to receive the spoken word, memorize it verbatim, and recite it word for word. Oli could communicate important events, or express stories of places, of romance, of powerful chiefs. It was a way to keep track of births, deaths, losses and triumphs. “Hawaiians are a profoundly oral people,” writes Trask, “whose major transmission of feeling and thought occurs not through the isolated practice of writing but through the instant act of living speech, chant, and song. The form of this kind of communication is thus inseparable from its meaning.” The traditional dirge, for instance, is all about feeling the sounds of loss that resonate in the grieving chanter. It is a performance of emotion, a gift to all that hear.

Written language didn’t come to the Hawaiian Islands until the 1820s. Before then, our oral-based storytelling tradition was almost the only way Hawaiians could stay connected to our history, genealogy, folklore.

Hawaiians believe that words have a sort of power. An old proverb says: “I ka ʻolelo ke ola, i ka ʻolelo ka make” — in the word is life, in the word is death. In Hawaiian culture, words and their underlying kaona (hidden meaning) have power — the ability to heal as well as hurt. The language is rich in wordplay, metaphors and hidden meanings. The power of the oli lies in the multiple meanings in each turn of phrase, meaning that a single oli might have three, four, or even five different interpretations within each listener.

In “A Legendary Tradition of Kamapua’a: The Hawaiian Pig-God,” Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa writes that kaona are a necessary element of any Hawaiian prose. “There is the [Kamapua’a] tale at its face value; boy meets girl, falls in love, falls out of love, and so on. An additional level is introduced by innumerable allusions to ancient events, myths, Gods and chiefs that have become metaphors in their own right. This includes the use of place names and the symbolism attached to the names of winds, rains, plants and rocks, evoking a certain emotional quality on many levels.” There may even be a deeper hidden meaning, known only to the raconteur and the intended listener.

Kameʻeleihiwa gives an example of an oli chanted by the pig god himself, as he calls out to his sweetheart, Anianimakani. Anianimakani o lalo o Kahiki e… Pāheahea mai ana kona leo ioʻu nei…” (“O Anianimakani below there at Kahiki… Her voice calls out invitingly to me here”). The name Anianimakani means “refreshing wind,” and also is used metaphorically as “gently and quickly moving,” and also, at times, “to travel swiftly.” She is both a woman and a breeze, always welcome on the hot shores of Kona.

The most well-known chant in Hawaii is the Kumulipo, the cosmogonic myth. Though nobody knows when it was created or by whom, it was passed down through centuries by oral storytellers. In old times, elders would always recite the Kumulipo at the Makahiki. “At the time when the earth became hot, when the heavens turned inside out when the light of the sun was weakened causing the moon to shine, the time of the rise of the Pleiades, the time of night darkness, the realm of Gods, the time of Po…” First there was nothing but darkness, then the first life: seaweed, sea urchins, fish, all types of flying creatures, creepy crawly creatures, mammals from the rat to the dog to the human. Then light and reason come to pass, and the world of humans explode. In 1779, when Captain James Cook sailed into Kealakekua Bay for the first time, the elders chanted the Kumulipo to greet the ship.

When Christian missionaries arrived from the Americas in 1820 to convert Hawaiians, they sought to suppress cultural activities like music, dance, and oli. As a result, the practice of oli dwindled, but has experienced a revival in recent decades, thanks in part to the Hawaiian cultural revival that began in the 1960s. Growing up on the Big Island, I remember oli were most often recited during rites of passage like weddings or the New Year.

In the summertime, I would visit my aunt’s house to learn traditional skills. How to dye cloth with turmeric or tree bark. How to weave baskets from palm trees. How to plant bananas. Hawaiian names of the fruits, the ferns, the sun, the night. I remember sitting at sunset on the grassy beach, singing the Hawaiian alphabet in time with the waves. It was one wave per syllable: A e i o u… ka ke ki ko ku… la le li lo lu… with the last “u” syllable tapering off into a deep, low note. That is how I learned that waves come in patterns.

When Christian missionaries arrived from the Americas in 1820 to convert Hawaiians, they sought to suppress cultural activities like music, dance, and oli.
I left Hawaii 13 years ago, and have only been back once. For me, the islands represent my childhood, a time and place I’m at once a part of and separate. But I never learned how to do an oli. And somewhere along the line, between aunts and mothers chanting for ceremonies, I began to associate singing oli with “Hawaiianness.” I remember listening to my little 9-year-old cousin chant an oli once. I marveled at the strength she demonstrated, even through her slight body, and I felt envious. I remember thinking: despite my lineage, I’ll never be as Hawaiian as she.

I wish I could tell you I’m fluent in Hawaiian. I wish I could tell you I don’t get mistaken for a tourist when shopping at Ala Moana Center. I wish I could say I know all the meanings of the words I sung to my grandfather on his death bed.

The truth is, Hawaii to me is both familiar and foreign. I only spent half of my childhood there, and none of my adulthood. As a result, there are only so many ways I can feel connected to the islands — one of which is through my family. Thanks to these memories, oli, like woven baskets or the nurturing of a fern tree, is one way for me to feel a sense of belonging.

The Peace Boat in Hawaii: ‘We absolutely must not wage war’

Survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Japan during World War II visited Pearl Harbor and spoke at the University of Hawaii.

Last week, as Americans marked the 77th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a different kind of Japanese vessel paid a visit to Oahu.

That ship, called the Peace Boat, belongs to a Japanese non-governmental organization using a chartered passenger ship to sail the world promoting “peace, human rights, equal and sustainable development and respect for the environment.”

Established in 1983 in response to Japanese government censorship of past military aggression in Asia and the Pacific, the Peace Boat operates cruises for passengers mostly from Japan, but also other (mostly East Asian) countries with an emphasis on education and multi-cultural engagement.

“The basic philosophy of Peace Boat is that we bring people to different countries and cultures and facilitate face to face interactions and exchange,” said Peace Boat international coordinator Sumiko Hatakeyama. “That way people have a more realistic understanding of what is happening in the world and how social and global problems are affecting people in different places.”

Students from the United World College Southeast Asia on the deck of the Japanese NGO Peace Boat during a stop in Singapore on Sept. 11, 2018.

Hatakeyama helps facilitate the Peace Boat Hibakusha Project which, over 10 years, has brought more than 170 atomic bomb survivors — called hibakusha in Japanese — to speak of their experiences with war and peace in cities around the world.

Like the dwindling number of Pearl Harbor survivors, it’s becoming more difficult to find hibakusha who are able to take part in multi-nation ship voyages that last roughly three months.

Peace Boat’s current voyage (its 99th journey) left its home port of Yokohama on Sept. 1, and will have called on 24 ports in 21 countries when it arrives in Japan on Monday. Passengers include two hibakusha — both women: Michiko Tsukamoto and Tamiko Sora who were children living in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 when their hometown was obliterated by a 15-kiloton atomic bomb.

During the Peace Boat’s two-day stop on Oahu last week, Tsukamoto, Sora and others visited Pearl Harbor before making an appearance at the University of Hawaii’s Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace & Conflict Resolution to present a talk entitled “Surviving the Atomic Bombing.”

Each woman spoke for about 20 minutes through an interpreter to some 60 undergraduates and a handful of faculty on the last day of a Survey in Peace and Conflict class taught by Professor Brien Hallett.

After recounting their experiences as the world’s first atomic bomb survivors, Sora apologized for Pearl Harbor to her American audience with one student reciprocating with an apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to Hallett.

“Hibakusha testimony is extraordinarily emotional and there really aren’t a lot of questions you can ask about this experience,” Hallett said. “It’s so unique and emotionally devastating that questions don’t come to people’s mind. People are trying to process what they’ve just heard.”

Following their UH presentation, as the Peace Boat prepared to set sail for Japan, Tsukamoto and Sora reflected on their visit in a Skype interview.

Sora, who was 3 years old when the bomb exploded less than a mile from her home, said she was living on the borderline between those who lived and those who died.

Recalling her visit to Pearl Harbor, Sora said the thought of the lives lost at Pearl Harbor and in the broader war pained her and as she imagined the heartbreak of both American and Japanese parents, tears fell from her eyes.

“In my heart I felt a renewed conviction that we absolutely must not wage war,” she said.

Speaking of the current U.S.-Japan relationship, Sora said, “Japan is in a very weak position, I think. Japan needs to get out of this unfair relationship which is to the U.S.’s advantage and we Japanese should think for ourselves.”

Atomic bomb survivors Michiko Tsukamoto, left, and Tamiko Sora, right, and Peace Boat
Executive Committee Member Akira Kawasaki hold over 1,000 signatures from
Rutgers University students collected for the Hibakusha Appeal.

In December 2016, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe joined President Barack Obama at a ceremony at Pearl Harbor in which he said “we must never again repeat the horrors of war.” Describing the US-Japan relationship an “alliance of hope,” Abe vowed Japan would “never again wage war.”

Yet in recent years the U.S.-Japan relationship has placed a greater emphasis on U.S. arms sales and increased military spending, including the purchase of a U.S. anti-missile weapons system (tested in Hawaii) and $4 billion worth of F-35 stealth fighters, riling Japan’s neighbors, Korea, China, and Russia.

Last July, Japan’s military, known as Ground Self-Defense Forces, executed a joint offensive rocket exercise with the U.S. Army for the first time, firing surface-to-surface missiles and HIMARS rockets from Kauai during the 2018 Rim of the Pacific exercises.

As for Abe’s 2016 Pearl Harbor renunciation of war, Sora said, “I cannot believe him.”

She added, “If Japan wanted to produce nuclear weapons, it has the ability and support to build them. It’s possible that under certain circumstances, Japan could do so.”

Although Japan does not have nuclear weapons, Sora said, the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 caused many deaths and there are still people unable to return home.

“As long as nations continue to possess nuclear weapons, there may come a day in the future when they will be used, possibly by mistake, and the whole world could be destroyed,” said the life-long Hiroshima resident.

As a 10-year-old during the atomic bombing, Michiko Tsukamoto suffered radiation exposure with her mother. Her father died six days after the bomb and her mother 16 years later from radiation-related cancer. She described her own feelings at Pearl Harbor as “very complicated.”

“I felt the futility and stupidity of war very keenly as well as just how much ordinary citizens are misled by leaders who make bad decisions.”

Growing up, Tsukamoto said she never recognized the concept of hibakusha, but has come to recognize that she herself is one over a quarter century of offering public testimony and appealing for the abolition of nuclear arms.

When political leaders are unsteady, she said, the outcome leads to incidents like Hawaii’s Jan. 13 false missile alert or America’s decision to spend $1.2 trillion to modernize and maintain its own nuclear arsenal.

Tsukamoto was reluctant to discuss politics but said she felt that even after the Singapore Trump-Kim summit in June, the danger remains.

In a world with complex and evolving threats, Tsukamoto said it is very important for young people to remain hopeful. Her own source of hope was seeing the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and widespread international support for the last year’s United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which will enter into legal force once it has been adopted and ratified by 50 nations.

That treaty calls for the global prohibition of all nuclear weapons and has so far been signed by 69 countries and ratified by 19.

None of the nine nuclear states, however, has signed the treaty, nor has Japan.

(Source: CB)

Endangered Hawaiian monk seals face new challenge: Eels stuck up their noses

Picture of monk seal with eel up its nose shared by Noaa was only latest episode to occur in the past two years, baffling researchers

The Hawaiian monk seal has become endangered due to a range of threats, from fishing net entanglements to disease. Now the beleaguered species is facing an unexpected new challenge – eels getting stuck up their noses.

A picture of a monk seal with an eel up its nose was shared this week by a Hawaii-based division of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). The episode was just the latest eel-in-snout incident to occur in the past two years, baffling researchers.

“We’ve been intensively monitoring monk seals for four decades and in all of that time nothing like this has happened,” said Charles Littnan, the lead scientist at Noaa’s Hawaiian monk seal research program. “Now it’s happened three or four times and we have no idea why.”

‘Having a rotten fish inside your nose is bound to cause some problems,’ said Charles Littnan, the lead scientist at Noaa’s Hawaiian monk seal research program. Photograph: Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program

Researchers first spotted a seal with an eel nasal appendage in the summer of 2016, emailing colleagues who initially thought it was a joke. It has since happened enough times for the monk seal program to develop guidelines on how to remove the eels.

“They get stuck in there really snug, so you have to restrain the seal and give the eel a firm tug to get it out,” said Littnan. “One of them was really far in so it was like a magician’s handkerchief trick, we just had to keep pulling and pulling.”

The phenomena could cause potential problems for the seals in terms of infections or even by affecting their ability to dive and feed on marine creatures. Seals typically seal their nostrils shut when diving into the water, a process hampered by the presence of a nose-dwelling eel. “Having a rotten fish inside your nose is bound to cause some problems,” Littnan lamented.

Researchers have managed to successfully remove all of the protruding eels, all from juvenile seals, but are still trying to ascertain why this is happening.

One theory is that seals, which often regurgitate their meals, are simply throwing up eels through their noses. Another is that startled eels get stuck there while attempting to flee the seals as the predators forage for food beneath rocks. Either way, scientists are unsure why this nasal entrapment is only now being witnessed by humans.

“If I had to guess, I would say that it’s one of those strange oddities,” Littnan said. “If you observe nature long enough, you’ll see strange things.”

Monk seals are endemic to Hawaii and are listed in the US as an endangered species, with around 1,400 individuals remaining. Threats including fishing and disease, with climate change another looming challenge.

(Source: The Guardian)

Hurricane Lane a rarity for Hawaii, and a menace

A unique twist in meteorology reminds residents of the last big hurricane to hit the island, 1992’s Iniki, writes Jon Letman in the Daily Beast. Read on: 

A collection of islands in the middle of an ocean, Hawaii might seem like a prime target for hurricanes.

But major storms like Hurricane Lane—which was headed for landfall as a Category 3, prompting President Donald Trump to declare an emergency—are actually rarities for the 50th state.

Pacific cyclones hardly ever reach hurricane speed and intensity. For one thing, Hawaii is surrounded by deep, cool water, while hurricanes tend to develop in warmer water. A subtropical jet stream often located to the east of the islands can weaken storms with wind shear.

“Storms must have just the right conditions for a week or more to get close to Hawaii,” said Gary Barnes, a hurricane expert who is now retired from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences.

That jet stream, though, doesn’t provide total protection. “It wiggles and can be too far north to protect Hawaii at times,” Barnes said.

That’s the situation Hawaii finds itself in now. Parts of the state were already drowned in 20 inches of rain before Lane’s predicted landfall, with outer bands bringing flooding and landslides.

Forecasters at the Central Pacific Hurricane Center expect the storm to make a sharp curve to the west between Friday and Saturday as it nears the islands of Oahu and Kauai.

We are being evacuated. The neighborhood is too dangerous as the water from the Wailuku River keeps rising. Fire, police and county officials want us to move about 100 feet down the hill. There are still people stranded in homes. #HurricaneLane pic.twitter.com/93WqBeTI2f

— Lynn Kawano (@LynnKawano) August 24, 2018

Kauai bore the brunt of the last two major hurricanes to hit Hawaii. On November 24, 1982, Hurricane Iwa pounded Hawaii’s “Garden Island” with 110 mph winds.

A decade later, on September 11, 1992, the most powerful hurricane in Hawaii’s history, Hurricane Iniki, pummeled the island. Although there were only a handful of deaths, over 1,000 injuries, destruction of buildings and infrastructure and an estimated $1.8 billion in damage redefined how Kauai’s people view storms.

JoAnn Yukimura, mayor of Kauai County during Iniki, said Kauai is much better prepared today in terms of the ability to communicate, plan, and execute a carefully considered recovery.

After Iniki, Yukimura said that the island separated its debris with help from the Army Corps of Engineers and deployed the National Guard to prevent looting.

In the early 1990s, Yukimura recalled, Kauai's resilient residents got “used to living ‘in the woods,’” many having their own generators and cooking stoves.

She recalled how, at the time, FEMA workers traveling from Florida, which had been struck by Hurricane Andrew less than a month earlier, reported visiting homes in Florida where people brandished guns, warning them not to approach. But that wasn’t the case on Kauai, where neighbors had checked on one another and were helping each other.

“If one person had a generator, everybody was washing laundry at that house,” Yukimura recalled.

Kauai County’s current mayor, Bernard Carvalho, said leaders from the county’s two main islands Kauai and Niihau are “at the table every step of the way.”

Niihau, much smaller than Kauai, has a population of just over 100 people, all of whom are Native Hawaiian, living with very little contact outside the island. Carvalho added that equipment, supplies have been pre-positioned and a barge ready to be deployed if necessary. “We’re ready,” Carvalho said.

In preparation for Hurricane Lane, the National Tropical Botanical Garden moved the rarest of its rare plants indoors to a fortified building.

On Kauai’s south shore, at the National Tropical Botanical Garden staffers hurried to move about 1,500 of the rarest native Hawaiian plants into a fortified building, along with backup water supplies and staff to care from them.

The garden has a laboratory which houses nearly 6 million seeds inside a hurricane-hardened building with a redundant power supply to ensure frozen germplasm stays cold.

“We take our job really seriously in terms of protecting and perpetuating some of the rarest plants on earth,” said NTBG director and CEO Chipper Wichman.

“If you’ve been through it, you know what the heck it’s about… the last couple hurricanes was a pretty intense experience.” — Jerry Nishek, general manager of Kauai Nursery and Landscaping

Jerry Nishek, general manager of Kauai Nursery and Landscaping, said his staff was trimming large trees on its 100-acre property to avoid possible damage and laying large and fragile plants flat to avoid damage. With job sites around the island, loose materials need to be secured and move equipment out of flood zones, he added.

He and others still remember Iwa and Iniki and are taking preparation seriously. “If you’ve been through it, you know what the heck it’s about… the last couple hurricanes was a pretty intense experience,” Nishek said.

Barnes remembers Iniki vividly, including how he was unable to get on naval ships that left Pearl Harbor full of evacuees. “I felt abandoned,” he told The Daily Beast via email.

Meteorologists predicted that Hurricane Lane will slow down once it makes landfall. But officials and residents are still bracing for a violent aftermath. Trailing storms could thrash the island with flooding and destroy electricity and infrastructure.

And as last year’s hurricane in blacked-out Puerto Rico showed, flooding and storm surges can cause the most damage and prevent rescue workers from reaching those in need.

Hawaii’s natural topography and geographic diversity poses unique dangers for a hurricane.

The mountains’ atmosphere qualities bring more rail and the valleys overflow with runoff.

And Hawaii’s infrastructure wasn’t built with hurricanes in mind, according to Barnes, who described structures as “old, termite-compromised... that will fail with even [Category] 1 winds. Simply too expensive to build safe structures.”

And don’t forget that that Hawaii is home to Mount Kilauea, which began spewing hot lava months ago. While it’s incredibly unlikely that a hurricane would slam into the islands right when a volcano would be erupting, “more water might add to more explosions as water is [a] key ingredient for such,” Barnes said. A deluge of rain could pick up “volcano exhaust” and spread pollution downstream.

Hawaii’s isolation would hinder recovery.

“Hawaiians can’t run, can’t hide very well, and won’t be able to recover as fast,” Barnes said. “A major hurricane hit would devastate tourism for a year or more for the island that is hit.”

Hawaii has already weathered more than its share of danger this year: a ballistic missile false alarm, earthquakes, a volcanic eruption, and a devastating 50-inches April “rain bomb.”

Drainages at the Limahuli Garden on Kauai’s north shore were destroyed during the “rain bomb,” and workers hurried this week to pour new concrete.

“The fact is, climate change is real and whether we accept it or not, we’re in for a rough ride, and so planning for and building organizations that are resilient and prepared for these kinds of storms is critical,” Wichman said. “We’ve got to plan for it.”

'The entire habitat is gone': Hawaii's natural wonders claimed by lava

The Kilauea eruption has wiped out rare sites and whole ecosystems. As the island mourns a tragedy, it also accepts the brutal cycle of nature

In Puna, the area of Hawaii island that’s been hardest hit by the Kilauea volcano eruption, those who lived nearest to the lava flows watched the forest around their homes begin to die first. They said the fruit trees, flowers and ferns began turning brown, languishing in the noxious, sulfur-dioxide-filled air. Then the lava came. Now large swaths of formerly verdant forest has been replaced by rough and barren volcanic terrain.

“Before the eruptions, that area was probably the best forest left in the state of Hawaii,” said Patrick Hart, a biology professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “There were areas where the native Ohia forest extended right up to the ocean, and you just don’t see that in the rest of Hawaii,” he said. Now it’s covered with 20 to 30ft of lava.

On Hawaii island, also known as the Big Island, lava from the weeks-long eruption of the Kilauea volcano has also paved over tide pools and coral gardens, boiled a 400-year-old lake until it evaporated and killed a number of sea creatures.

But to scientists, it’s just part of life on the state’s youngest island, where land is still being created as lava continuously reshapes the natural environment.

“From a human point of view, what’s happening is tragic,” said David Damby, a volcanologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). “But from the volcano’s point of view, that’s the job she does: to build new land and change the landscape. That’s the way the earth works.”

The humid, rainy forests in Puna were an important habitat for native Hawaiian trees, birds and insects, Hart said. Chartreuse-colored ‘amakihis and bright red ‘apapanes rested on trees, Hawaiian hawks soared through the air, and dragonflies, butterflies and crickets all made the forest their home.

Before the lava: tropical forests in Puna, Hawaii

It will likely take at least 100 years for the decimated tracts of lava-covered forest to begin again – first with lichen, then with native ferns and Ohia trees that have adapted to grow on lava. In 150 years, Hart said, the land could begin to resemble a forest like the one that used to be there. It’s a process that has happened many times before on Hawaii.

“It’s a very powerful thing to witness,” said Ryan Perroy, a volcanologist and associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “But in geological terms, it’s also not an unexpected event. This is how Puna was built, with volcanic eruptions.”

Elsewhere in Puna, there have been other dramatic changes to the landscape. On the morning of 2 June, lava poured into Green Lake. Plumes of steam began rising from the popular swimming spot where depths reached about 200ft; in less than two hours, the 400-year-old freshwater lake was gone – evaporated and covered in lava.

An arial photo show Green Lake, which was boiled away by lava

Just days later, rivers of lava flowed into nearby Kapoho Bay, destroying hundreds of homes and paving over the turquoise, coral-filled bay and a series of rare, protected tide pools that had teemed with marine life.

There was no place like Kapoho in all of Hawaii
John Burns, scientist

“Kapoho Bay was a very important recreational place for people in this area,” said Steven Colbert, an associate professor in marine science at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “There aren’t a lot of places here where you can access the shoreline and get in the water easily. And this was one of those areas. It was also a very important research spot for us scientists.”

Before: the Kapoho Bay tide pools as they used to be 

The tide pools at Kapoho Bay, Colbert said, were home to thriving coral and abundant fish – especially small ones that found safe haven from predators in the protected environment. When the lava entered the ocean there, much of the marine life was covered or boiled alive.

“For the animals right there when the lava reaches the water, they don’t have a chance,” he said.

In the meantime, the surrounding water will need to clear, but that won’t happen until the eruption slows or stops.

“It’s gone from beautiful Hawaiian water that is clear and turquoise, where you can see 50 to 60ft down, to a muddy mess filled with volcanic glass particles,” he said. “It blots out the sunlight so normal algae can’t grow, and filter feeders like coral have to sort between bits of food and volcanic particles.”

After: an aerial view of the Kapoho Bay, including the tide pools, which is now covered in fresh lava

The loss to scientists has been great. “There was no place like Kapoho in all of Hawaii,” said John Burns, who spent a decade studying coral in the tide pools, said. “That entire habitat is gone now.” Once the glassy volcanic particles dissipate and the PH and temperature of the water returns to normal, he said, the coral can begin to regrow. But it will be starting from scratch, just as part of that area did when it was formed by lava in the 1950s and 1960s. How fast the coral regrow will depend on whether the lava creates a sloping coastline, or protected pools like it did in Kapoho, which can allow for faster growth than the usual rate of one centimeter per-year.

“In terms of marine organisms and coral, we’re basically starting from day one now.” And yet, he said, it’s easier to lose an irreplaceable reef to lava than it is to lose it to bleaching, which has happened in many places in Hawaii because of a global rise in ocean temperatures.

“There’s the tragedy of people losing their homes and for us, as scientists, losing our research site. But from the perspective of the environment, this is a natural cycle,” he said. “I’d much rather see a reef die from lava than from bleaching.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Why is Guatemala's volcanic eruption so much deadlier than Hawaii's?

Both eruptions swallowed homes and reminded everyone how ferocious nature can be.

But there are huge differences between Guatemala's Fuego volcano eruption, which has killed 62 people since Sunday, and Hawaii's recent Kilauea eruption, which hasn't killed anyone but keeps slowly wreaking havoc one month later.

Kilauea's volcanic eruption, left, and Guatemala's Fuego eruption

Here's why these eruptions are so different -- and why they have drastically different death tolls:

Lava vs. pyroclastic flow
Kilauea's primary mode of destruction is lava, but Fuego has unleashed pyroclastic flow -- a nasty mix of ash, rock and volcanic gases that can be much more dangerous than lava.

In Guatemala, pyroclastic flow from Sunday's eruption topped 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,000 degrees Celsius), CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera said.

"This eruption at Fuego was explosive, sending hot debris down the steep sides of the volcano to make the pyroclastic flows," said Erik W. Klemetti, associate professor of geosciences at Denison University.

He said pyroclastic flows can tumble down a volcano at hundreds of kilometers per hour -- way faster than what people and even cars could outrun.

By contrast, Kilauea produces lava (or sticky, molten rock) that typically creeps along at maybe hundreds of meters per hour -- not nearly as fast as devastating pyroclastic flow.

Pyroclastic flows are not like lava. PFs are rapid avalanches of hot gas & rock ranging from ash-sized (like sand) to boulders, + anything they pick up (like trees & cars). PFs are devastating & deadly. #VolcanodeFuego https://t.co/tABdt7bm3V

— Dr Janine Krippner (@janinekrippner) June 4, 2018

Different communities
Kilauea is within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. Lava has destroyed dozens of homes and other structures in communities outside the park boundaries.

But the Fuego volcano erupted near densely populated areas.

"Villages are right on the foothills of the mountain," Cabrera said. "So they had no time (to escape)."
That meant unsuspecting villagers -- such as those in the community of El Rodeo -- were suddenly overwhelmed by ash, lava fragments and gases speeding toward them at 435 mph (700 kph).

Different long-term effects
In both the Kilauea and Fuego areas, "the land will be unusable for years," Klemetti said.

But Guatemala faces a special danger that Hawaii doesn't.

"The bigger issue with pyroclastic flows is they can be turned into volcanic mudflows (lahars) when the loose debris mixes with rain/river waters," he said. "That is the new danger at Fuego right now."

(Source: CNN)

Hawaii could face volcanic smog, acid rain, and blast projectiles

After surviving earthquakes and molten lava, residents of Hawaii's Big Island now have new threats to worry about: steam-driven explosions, hazardous volcanic smog and acid rain.

The US Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on Wednesday warned of possible explosive eruptions in the coming weeks. That could happen because as lava continues to sink in a lake inside a Kilauea crater, an influx of groundwater could interact with the lava to create steam explosions.

Those forces would emit "ballistic projectiles" -- as small as pebbles or weighing up to several tons. The agencies also said ash clouds would rise to greater elevations, dispensing ash over wider areas.

"At this time, we cannot say with certainty that explosive activity will occur, how large the explosions could be, or how long such explosive activity could continue," an advisory said.

Gov. David Ige asked President Donald Trump to issue a disaster declaration for Hawaii as a result of the ongoing earthquakes and volcano eruption, according to a press release.

The declaration allows federal funds to begin to flow to state and local efforts in Hawaii. The estimated cost to protect residents over the next 30 days is expected to exceed $2.9 million, according to the governor's office.

A brief explosion Wednesday on a Kilauea crater was the result of falling rocks and not the interaction of lava with the water table, the USGS said.

The Kilauea eruption last week created new volcanic vents on the ground miles east of the summit, releasing slow-moving lava and toxic gas into island communities.

Officials have warned of dangerous levels of sulfur dioxide gas.

If winds weaken, that gas and other volcanic pollutants can settle easily with moisture and dust to create a haze called volcanic smog, or "vog," with tiny sulfuric acid droplets that can pose respiratory problems, according to the US Geological Survey.

Trade winds could weaken Thursday and Friday, meaning the vog that's largely been accumulating over the ocean south of the Big Island could pool over a larger portion of it, creating possible health hazards, the National Weather Service says.

And with high chances of rain on those days, sulfuric acid droplets would fall, creating another menace known as acid rain, CNN meteorologist Michael Guy says.

Respiratory problems
At higher concentrations, vog can cause headaches and irritation to the lungs and eyes, the University of Hawaii at Hilo says.

"Because of their small size, aerosol particles such as those in vog penetrate deep into the human lung and are readily retained," the USGS says.

High levels of acidic particles in vog "can induce asthma attacks, especially in adolescents, and can also impede the ability of the upper respiratory tract to remove other potentially harmful particles," it says.

For people with asthma and other respiratory problems, "the effects are much more serious, causing a tightening of the airways in the lungs and making it very difficult to breathe," the university says.

But it adds: "There's been no clear evidence that vog causes lingering damage to normally healthy individuals."

If trade winds become lighter as predicted later this week, vog could pool northward over parts of the island by Friday, the weather service says.

But winds are forecast to return -- and the vog could be pushed off much of the island -- by Friday night, it says.

Similar to battery acid
If it rains where vog has collected, acid rain would result.

"Wherever you have a vog plume, you're going to have acid rain, if it's raining," University of Hawaii meteorologist Steven Businger told CNN affiliate Hawaii News Now.

Army National Guard First Lt. Aaron Hew Len measures sulfur dioxide gas Tuesday in Leilani Estates.

What are the effects of acid rain? The droplets of sulfuric acid in vog have the corrosive properties of diluted battery acid, the USGS says.

"When atmospheric moisture is abundant, these droplets combine with it and fall as acid rain, damaging plants and accelerating the rusting of metal objects such as cars, industrial and farm equipment, and building components," it says.

The amount of acid rain depends on the concentration of sulfur dioxide in the air, CNN's Guy says.
Determining how acid rain affects human health is complicated, and Guy says the effects on the skin are unclear.

One direct, immediate threat is not the rain, but rather breathing in the particles in the vog -- the very pollutants that caused the acid rain, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Walking in acid rain, or even swimming in a lake affected by acid rain, is no more dangerous to humans than walking in normal rain or swimming in non-acidic lakes," the EPA says.

But acid rain can contaminate household water supplies by leaching metals from building and plumbing materials, the USGS says.

That includes rooftop rainwater-catchment systems that Hawaii residents use for drinking water.
"In 1988, the drinking water of nearly 40% of homes using such systems in the Kona Districts of the island was found to be contaminated with lead leached by acid rain," the USGS says. "Tests confirmed that the blood of some residents of these homes had elevated lead levels."

Businger told Hawaii News Now that acid rain is not an immediate health hazard, adding that it's "the least of their (residents) worries."

More vents open
Other dangers persist, not only in the form of lava but also earthquakes and newly formed cracks.

Two additional volcanic vents -- the 13th and 14th -- erupted Tuesday in the Leilani Estates area, where roughly 1,700 residents were asked to evacuate last week. At least 36 structures -- including at least 26 homes -- have been destroyed.

On Wednesday, a 15th vent formed -- this one in the Lanipuna subdivision, the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency says.

Residents were being still allowed to check on their properties from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day but must be prepared to leave at a moment's notice, the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency says.

(Source: CNN)

A beginner’s guide to Hawaii’s otherworldly lava

Here’s what scientists and native Hawaiians see in the sublime molten fire.

There is something remarkable about the lava spurting out of Kilauea, the miles-wide shield volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island that fissured anew last week.

It cuts across roads, forming berms of black and smoldering rock. It bursts from the ground, dancing like bubbles above a cauldron. In one video, it creeps across the land and then devours a Ford Mustang.

So far, the lava has destroyed 35 structures in total, including 25 homes. This current activity may continue for some time: On Tuesday, two new lava fissures opened. One of the new cracks sits uphill of Lanipuna Gardens, a subdivision of 250 people that was evacuated last week but has so far remained unharmed. Hawaii Civil Defense ordered the mandatory evacuation of its last remaining residents Tuesday evening.

Yet numbers don’t get at the potency of the lava, at its otherworldliness. Where other volcanoes sometimes appear powdery or drab, Kilauea’s lava glows red. Other lava hardens soon after it bursts from the ground; Kilauea’s lava remains hot enough to ooze forward, setting cars on fire. In just this episode alone, Kilauea’s energy has torn a new, 2.5-mile-long hole in the ground.

Kilauea volcano’s summit lava lake

Both geoscientists and native Hawaiians agree that Hawaii’s lava is special. But they have different ways of talking about why that is—and different ways of seeing the substance that defines their profession or gives them a home.

For scientists, the defining quality of Hawaii’s lava is its chemistry. It’s what geologists call a basaltic lava, and this affects everything from its color to its hazards.

There are roughly two types of lava—and both types are, of course, runny and hot. Kilauea’s lava is formed by the melting of an oceanic plate, which means that it contains less silicon dioxide—the same mineral that becomes quartz—than continental plates. As such, it’s extremely runny and super hot. It also doesn’t put up much resistance to gases, which can freely pass through it. (When a continental plate melts, you get an eruption more like Mount St. Helens: That lava is stickier, and it often traps gas until it suddenly all escapes at once.)

Mika McKinnon, a geophysicist and disaster researcher, said this gives Hawaii’s lava a special characteristic: It’s “exactly like you imagine hot lava as a kid, leaping between furniture,” she told me in an email. “The geochemistry of Hawaiian lavas means [that it forms] smooth, laminar flow in snaking rivers. It’s also extremely hot, giving it that iconic fiery glow.”

That fiery glow, that childlike quality—it makes sense that some journalists have fallen back on cinema to describe the eruption. Watching videos of Kilauea’s lava, I kept thinking of the first time I ever saw lava on screen: the Cave of Wonders sequence in Disney’s Aladdin. Another science journalist—upon seeing the lava lake at the summit of Kilauea, which has brimmed with molten fire this month—recalled the cracks of Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings.

“Part of why these eruptions look familiar is that it’s easier to safely photograph and record them than faster-moving, more violent eruptions, so these images are the ones we more commonly see in kids’ science books, or inspiring artists when they’re animating movies,” McKinnon told me in an email.

A lava flow crosses Makamae Street in Leilani Estates. (USGS / Reuters)

“Kilauea’s lava is 1,170 degrees Celsius (or 2,140 degrees Fahrenheit) when it erupts, with the surface starting to cool within a few hundred seconds,” she said. “As it cools, it creates a crust that the lava flow breaks through over and over again.”

You can often estimate the temperature of lava by its color, she added. Yellow lava is the hottest, burning somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 degrees Celsius (about 1,830 to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit). Orange lava smolders between 800 and 1,000 degrees Celsius (about 1,500 to 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit). And red lava is actually the coolest, at 600 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,100 to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit).

But photographs taken at night are often color-corrected, throwing off this scale, McKinnon warned.

In addition to the many colors of lava, there are several types of lava that can appear during one eruption. “In Hawaiian-style eruptions, you get pahoehoe, the ropey lava that looks like a sticky river when flowing; and a’a, with is the rubbly lava that looks like a tractor-tread of debris moving and tumbling,” said Eric Klemetti, a professor of volcanology at Dennison University, in an email. “Those differ based on things like temperature and crystal contact, as a’a is a stickier lava.”

Scientists turn to precise instruments for their information. Jascha Polet, a geophysicist at California State Polytechnic at Ponoma, said researchers look to two sets of data—from instruments on the volcano itself and from images from satellites in orbit—to learn about Kilauea’s “plumbing system,” its subsurface network of lava tubes and flows.

Scientists use this data to improve their volcanism forecasts, as they try to understand “what types of deformation and seismic signals occur as precursory activity before an eruption,” Polet told me in an email.

But Western scientists were not the first people to encounter Hawaii’s volcanoes. Native Hawaiians have lived on the islands, and among the volcanoes, for more than 900 years. And their history, literature, and culture all recognize the reality of living near such a powerful phenomenon.

(A brief language note: Everyone who lives in the archipelago is called a “Hawaii resident.” The term “Hawaiian” is reserved for someone with native Hawaiian ancestry. This distinction is regularly made on the islands, including in the state constitution.)

“There’s a’a or pahoehoe, the rough lava or the smooth lava,” said Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui, a professor of literature at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “But the word for both of them is Pele.”

Pele is the Hawaiian deity of volcanoes, lava, and fire—but deity in its Western sense doesn’t quite describe the scope of Pele’s power. Many Hawaiian families trace their lineage back to Pele, meaning they count her as an ancestor.

“Pele is not just the goddess of lava. Lava is Pele,” Ho’omanawanui told me. “The lava flows basically reaffirm what our literature tells us—that the land is alive, that Pele is alive. When we talk about the lava being alive, it’s a metaphor for the earth itself being alive. The lava is Pele, the magma is Pele, the lava flow and then when the lava hardens—each you can just replace the word with Pele.”

Even the site of the new eruption makes sense within Hawaiian culture. The current eruption has focused primarily on a subdivision called Leilani Estates. But Leilani Estates is a new name, and the subdivision sits within a larger area that Hawaiians traditionally called Keahialaka, which means “the fire of Laka.” Laka is the goddess of hula and one of Pele’s daughters.

“The Hawaiians watching are looking at the names of these places and saying, ‘Oh yeah!’” said Noelani M. Arista, a professor of Hawaiian history at the University of Hawaii. “It’s like, sometimes people are amazed that a flood will hit a flood zone. But we’ve got place names that say flood zone.”

“Anyone can come and slap a new name on any thing: ‘Let’s call it Leilani Estates!’ And Leilani is a generic name. But that won’t take away from the mana, the spiritual power and characteristics of that place, that the old place name embodies,” agreed Ho’omanawanui.

These new names “lull people into a sense of complacency,” she said. “[They think,] I’m not actually buying property and building a house in an active lava rift zone, but I’m buying a piece of paradise.”

A lava fissure crosses the road on Hawaii's Big Island on May 3. (Jeremiah Osuna / Reuters)

But sometimes these new names can be ironic. Kilauea is surrounded by rainforest, and people in Hawaii customarily link its lava flows to the Kool-Aid-red lehua flowers that grow around it. So when Ho’omanawanui read that one of the first lava fissures in Leilani Estates opened up on Mohala Street, she laughed. “Well, of course!” she said. “Mohala means ‘to blossom,’ or ‘to bloom.’ In a way, it’s all interconnected.”

Pele’s story takes many forms—Ho’omanawanui has studied 14 different serialized newspaper versions of it, all of which first appeared in the 19th century. But many describe a similar journey: how Pele and her family came up from an island in the South Pacific, how they found the Hawaii archipelago, and how Pele traveled to every island, looking for a place to keep her fire. She visited every island, and dug a hole in every island, until she eventually found Hawaii Island and placed her fire in Kilauea. (Ho’omanawanui recommended that mainland Americans watch Holo Mai Pele, a PBS-filmed hula about Pele, for a credible summary of her story.)

“The story of Pele is a poetic, literary telling of what scientists would maybe call the Ring of Fire, and how volcanic activity gets to the Hawaiian islands from other parts of the Pacific,” said Ho’omanawanui. “It’s an ideological explanation for why we don’t have volcanic activity occurring now on the other islands.”

But it’s more than a just-so story. Arista, the Hawaiian historian, contrasts how non-native Hawaii residents and native Hawaiians have discussed the recent lava flow. Much of the national media attention has focused on an American-centric understanding of the destruction, she said—for instance, by talking about the extent of property loss.

“But then you’ve got Hawaiians saying, how amazing is the presence of this in my life,” she said. “Native people who live in the subdivision are largely saying, ‘Yes, I knew I was living in this space where volcanic activity is a huge factor, because I’ve lived my life here. And because we have this respect for Pele, I wanted to live here.’”

Ho’omanawanui said she saw many native Hawaiians greeting the lava flow not with dread, but with acceptance. “When the flows start, you clean the house, you open the door, and you say: ‘Tūtū Pele, this is your land, take it,’” she said.

(Since Ho’omanawanui’s family tracks its lineage back to Pele, they call her Tūtū, or grandmother. But other Hawaiians and non-Natives will call her Tūtū Pele out of respect, even if she is not an ancestor to them. “They acknowledge she’s a special force of nature—literally,” she said. Others, including non-Natives, may call her Madame Pele for the same reason.)

A fissure, opening on Luana Street in Leilani Estates, shoots lava 230 feet in the air on May 6. (USGS / Reuters)

Ho’omanawanui and Arista told me that seeing the lava as Pele didn’t detract from the scientific understanding of it. Instead, Pele anchors the experience of the lava, envelops it, and connects it to the lives of people who came before.

“Through dance, through costuming, through specific flowers—there’s layers of representation that I think really evoke a sensory experience beyond just knowledge, beyond just understanding as a Western scientific geological process,” said Ho’omanawanui. “It’s a complete experience that is inclusive of that [scientific] knowledge but goes way beyond it.”

“We don’t have the words for belief or faith in this stuff,” she said. Instead, she said, Westerners should see Hawaiian customary belief as a practice and as a way of understanding the world.

Lately, Hawaiian women who practice hula—including hula about Pele’s story—discuss how thrilling it is to see this real-life, contemporary connection to their art. “[Hula] is a weekly practice,” said Arista, “and that weekly practice stretches for years. So it’s a dance [these women have] come to inhabit and know—and when they watch the volcano erupting now, they can see the movement. They can see what the movement is talking about.”

“There’s a whole class of words that belong to the description of [Pele and her] family, that have to do with fire, anger, heat, and light, and you won’t know them unless you speak and read Hawaiian, and chant, and dance,” she said.

Sometimes the customary understanding can anticipate the scientific view. When Pele makes her journey from the south, she is accompanied by an entourage of family members. These represent all the activity that accompanies an eruption: So one brother may be lightning, several sisters may be the trees and flowers of the rainforest, and several other brothers are sharks.

Scientists now know that lightning can accompany a volcanic eruption. (Researchers successfully recorded volcanic thunder for the first time earlier this year.) But recent research has suggested sharks may sense volcanic lightning and electromagnetic energy with their electroreceptors. This may let them find new volcanoes—and new sources of life, and food—across the ocean.

“When you experience a volcanic eruption at the crater in the mountain, there’s a whole lot of other activity that accompanies it. There are storms that gather, there’s electrical energy in the air. I’ve seen waterspouts form offshore,” said Ho’omanawanui. “From a Western perspective, they all get separated out—they say, look at that lava eruption—and they don’t see all the other stuff that’s happening.”

She added that many geoscientists, who spend days camped on the volcano and apart from civilization, come to see the volcano in this light. “They are often very steeped in their environment—it’s impressive to me,” she said. “It’s really a worldview-changing experience—in how you see the world, the Earth and the universe—to know that you’re really seeing new land being birthed right before your eyes.”

And that’s why many Hawaiians see the latest eruption as a kind of warning, both women told me. As the islands have filled with non-Hawaiian residents, and as these newcomers have run afoul of longstanding custom and of environmental laws, they are misunderstanding and misusing the land.

There’s a story about Pele and a place called Kapa’ahu, which is not so far from Leilani Estates on the Big Island. It tells of how Pele once wrapped herself in a cloak of a’a lava in order to take a nap—the kapa in Kapa’ahu means cloak—and warned her family not to wake her up. Hours later, she was awakened by an incessant, annoying drumbeat. She stalked off to look for it—and she eventually found it, and an alluring male hula leader, on the other side of the archipelago: at Ke’e Beach on Kauai Island.

The most recent eruption of Kilauea was not the first one to devour cars. (InterNetwork Media / Getty)

Kapa’ahu now sits under black, hardened lava, paved over by Kilauea’s eruption a decade ago. And the northern entire section of Kauai was devastated by floods a month ago, part of a rain system that damaged or destroyed more than 500 homes across the state. Many parts of Kauai, including Ke’e Beach, remain largely inaccessible to daily traffic.

“A lot of Hawaiians in my community have been saying that they don’t really see it as a coincidence that, on one end of the archipelago, you have this horrific flooding—and now on the complete opposite end, you have lava flows destroying as well,” said Ho’omanawanui. It seems like Hawaii is declaring its fragility and its power all at once, she said.

Arista, the historian, agreed. “When you look at social media, at the kinds of conversations that Hawaii residents are having, they say: We’ve got floods on one end [of the archipelago], and we’ve got fire on the other. And a lot of local Hawaiians go, yep, that’s what it means to live in these islands.”

“That fire is not a new phenomenon,” she told me. “The flood, on the other hand, might be climate change.”

(Source: The Atlantic)