The COVID-19 pandemic forced a temporary halt to tourism, resulting in substantially fewer people visiting the bay, which gave the bay’s delicate marine ecosystem a chance to heal significantly. “This coral reef bay is very fragile and we need to find a way to protect it,” said Cindi Punihaole-Kennedy, Kūpuna and Director of the Kahaluʻu Bay Education Center - a project of the Kohala Center. This development, they said, is a serious concern. Park caretakers said many visitors appeared to arrive with chemical sunscreens, because the state continues to allow those to be sold in stores.
During the week before Christmas and through the New Year, the number of visitors rose to an average of 500 daily visitors. As soon as the pandemic was reined in enough for mainland and international flights to return to Big Island airports, that number grew to approximately 100 visitors per day.
15, 2020, the park received an average of 45-60 daily visitors. Prior to state reopening to trans-Pacific travel on Oct. Kahaluʻu Beach and Bay Park on Hawai‘i Island is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. However, one of the silver linings is the respite it’s provided the islands’ delicate natural world. The havoc the coronavirus pandemic has wrought in Hawai‘i is so far-reaching and crippling that it becomes hard to quantify in totality.
REEF SAFE SUNSCREEN BRANDS TARGET FREE
Volunteers at Kahalu’u Bay show off free sunscreen dispensers that truly offer reef safe sunscreen.
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