Holomua Marine Initiative

Local Ocean Users Sought for Maui Navigation Team

The Holomua community planning process kicked-off with a pilot on Maui in October 2022 with three, interactive, facilitated informational and knowledge sharing sessions put on by the DLNR Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR).

This is the beginning of an immense community engagement process, in which the Maui community is being asked to share their mana’o and help build Maui’s Navigation team, which will be made up of Maui ocean users who currently fish or engage with ocean resources from Maui’s nearshore waters and who want to ensure future generations are able to do the same.

The Navigation Team will work together as a team to review science, Maui data and community input, then set management goals and design a network of fishing regulations and management priorities for Maui’s nearshore reef. They will be the main drivers in determining what would work best for their island and community.

Share your mana‘o or nominate someone to serve on the navigation team.

The goal of the Holomua Marine 30X30 initiative is to effectively manage our marine resources with at least 30% of each island’s nearshore waters established as a network of marine management areas (MMAs) by 2030. Currently only 6% of the states near shore waters are designated as MMAs.

A major emphasis of the talk story events that took place in Wailuku, Lahaina, and Hana was for marine managers and aquatic biologists to just listen to people and gather their thoughts and advice on possible management measures to achieve the 30% goal via a network of MMAs.

“MMA’s and fishing are not mutually exclusive,” explained Luna Kekoa, DAR’s Recreational Fishing Program Manager. “In fact,” he says, “the better we can manage our nearshore waters, the better fishing will be.”

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