Get Involved
Be a Honu Hero
Plastic pollution is one of the most significant threats impacting our ocean today. One million marine animals are killed by plastic pollution every year. Marine Institute at the Maui Ocean Center’s (MOCMI's) Honu Hero Beach Cleanup Program enables residents and visitors to take a hands-on approach to protect our marine environments by removing pollutants from both the land and ocean by organizing individual, group, and community cleanup efforts.
How it Works
-
Submit a Honu Hero kit request (72 hours advanced noticed is required). Kits include a bucket or reusable bag for debris along with a datasheet, clipboard, pencils, and gloves
-
Pick up your Honu Hero kit. Pick up is available Tuesday through Friday.
-
Select a beach to clean and have fun!
-
Return your Honu Hero kit and completed data sheet within 72 hours of pick up.
-
Post a picture of your clean-up on instagram! Use the hashtag #HonuHero and tag @mocmarineinstitute.
Volunteer with MOCMI
Volunteering with MOCMI enables you to actively engage in ocean conservation efforts and connect with new friends who share your interests while acquiring valuable training and real-world work experience.
How to Become a Volunteer
Complete the online volunteer application linked below. We will contact you for an interview based on your availability and the current volunteer needs at MOCMI.
Volunteering with MOCMI enables you to actively engage in ocean conservation efforts and connect with new friends who share your interests while acquiring valuable training and real-world work experience.
Available Volunteer Opportunities
Sea turtle husbandry and rehabilitation volunteers assist with the on-site, day-to-day care of patients. Volunteer duties include conducting water quality monitoring, recording food and fecal count, cleaning saltwater holding tanks, food prep and assisting with sea turtle treatments as requested by MOCMI staff.
Position Requirements:
-
Must be at least 16 years of age
-
Must commit to 6 months of service
-
Must work a minimum of one three-hour shift (9am – 12pm or 12pm – 3pm) per week
Community Clean Ups
Why Clean-Ups Matter
Community-led beach and reef clean-ups play a vital role in the health of Hawai’i coastal ecosystems. They go beyond just aesthetics by safeguarding marine life from harmful debris such as plastics and abandoned fishing gear.
Did you know that over 80% of our sea turtle rehabilitation cases are due to fishing gear interaction?
Beach Clean Ups: By ensuring our beaches remain trash-free, we have a better chance of preventing debris from entering the ocean, where it is more difficult to collect. Rubbish on land also poses a threat to coastal wildlife.
Reef Clean Ups: Marine debris can block sunlight necessary for coral photosynthesis, entangle and kill reef organisms, or break corals. Community volunteers use snorkel gear to retrieve debris they find littering the reefs.
MOCMI Clean Up Events
What We Bring
-
Buckets and gloves for debris collection
-
Snacks and water refills
-
A fun time with a sustainable community!
What You Bring
-
Reef safe sunscreen
-
A reusable water bottle
-
Additional personal clean-up supplies
-
Snorkel gear for a reef clean-up
Sign-up for our Newsletter and you'll notified of upcoming Clean Up events.
Fishing Line Recycling Program
Lawaiʻa Pono
(fish responsibly)
Abandoned fishing line damages coral colonies and entangles sea turtles, monk seals, manta rays, and other marine animals. MOCMI's Fishing Line Recycling Program (FLRP) helps prevent pollution and decrease harmful interactions between marine life and discarded fishing line.
The FLRP enables anglers to easily take a proactive approach to prevent pollution and reduce entanglement hazards by properly discarding their line. Fishing line recycling bins and educational signage are installed at high-traffic fishing locations along Maui’s shoreline, harbors, and boat ramps.
Fishing line is routinely collected from the recycling bins, sorted and separated from hooks and weights, measured, and recorded in our database. The line is then shipped to the Berkley Conservation Institute where it is melted down and made into fish habitat structures and other repurposed equipment.
MOCMI’s team performs bi-weekly shoreline and underwater surveys to collect and document discarded fishing line and other fishing debris. The data obtained is used to measure the program’s success over time
Contact us for more information or to have a bin installed in your area.
Report Tagged Turtles
Before releasing a sea turtle patient that MOCMI has rescued and/or rehabilitated, our staff biologists insert Passive Integrative Transporter (PIT) tag into the turtle’s hind flippers and etch a mototool tag on the patient’s carapace. The main benefit of PIT tags is that they are nearly permanent; however, one must have the appropriate scanner to read them.
To mototool tag, MOCMI's biologists use a Dremel to safely etch the shell with the initials of the island and the number of the stranding case that year (for example, MA for Maui and 25 for the twenty-fifth turtle tagged. The groove is then filled with white paint that is harmless to the turtle but makes it easier for future observers to view the turtle’s number without disturbing it. These numbers will typically last up to a year, depending on the turtle’s growth rate.
Reporting a tagged sea turtle helps MOCMI understand the long term health and habits of our patients after we release them back into the wild. All sea turtle response, rehabilitation, and tagging authorized under NOAA and USFWS permits.
