Pohoiki in the Future Perfect Tense

[kalianna]

Interesting article iin Civil Beat, restoration vs stewardship.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/10/will-b...eds-do-it/

[Sphamayle]

Make it into a large fishpond with a swimming area.

[leilanidude]

Make it into a large fishpond with a swimming area.
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Too hot. The fish that got trapped in it, died.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Too hot. The fish that got trapped in it, died.

I wonder. I moved to Puna in 1999. I’m a gardener, so I carefully watch temperature and rainfall. It now becomes warmer, at summer season temperatures about 3 weeks earlier than when I moved here. It also stays warmer 4 weeks later in the fall. At some point will it become even hotter, too hot? Will we or our descendants be trapped in it and die? Or should we hope for high efficiency solar powered AC, and stay inside during the daylight hours as a necessity for our survival?

[Obie]

Wouldn't the heat that killed the fish have come from the magma that's still down there or the residual heat that is going to last for years to come.

When I first bought in Vacationland, I had a steam vent in my yard that was from the 1960 eruption, 40 years earlier.

I already have high efficiency solar powered AC. I'm just using your solar panels to keep my house cool. Thank You !

[MarkD]

Regarding the Civil Beat article on Pohoiki, this is the second or third article on the topic and the writer has not once mentioned swimming or ocean recreation.  His focus on strictly on the boat ramp aspect.

[randomq]

Write your council person, I did. At least we can have a hot ponds again, and this project won't have been a total waste of taxpayer funds! If enough of us give them a good idea, it'll become their idea! ;-)

[Sam Son]

.     On Friday evening's broadcast Mayor Kimo announced that Isaac Hale Park will be open in five days.  Only confirming the DLNR'S bacterial-risk warning signs are still there and pressure washing the ramp are left to do on Tuesday.  It's possible the gate will be unlocked on Wednesday.
     Despite claims that it was a storm surge that clogged up the channel, there hasn't been an overhead swell in months.  The waves are now crashing, and the east swell is forecast to reach eight feet tomorrow.  I won't even venture a guess about what's going to happen down at Pohoiki next.

[MyManao]

MyManao - Interestingly, with the new notch (the newly exposed bay) cut into the pile of debris I suspect the ocean may clear out the rest in the next few years without anymore help..

It could also go the other way - when the channel was open, you could see new sand and rock deposits being made on the back/mauka side of the swimming hole. If the channel stayed open, the material may have just filled in the boat ramp area completely, at least in the short term. Regardless, it seems like it's largely outside our control (or at least exceeds the available budget) - have to wait and see what the real powers that be decide to do in the coming years.

You know, when we had this discussion I was thinking of the continuously changing landscape and imagining that the surf, the tidal surges, would be a strong influence on the way things evolve. That water coursing in and out of the bay could not help but take a little debris away with each passing surge.. and over time the sand will be carted off.

Of course, as has been seen over the eons, all black sand beaches are transitory. They are created by lava flows that once stopped subject them to the forces of erosion. But those forces may not be immediate, and maybe, with the changes unleashed by the dredging, what we are seeing may be short term changes, not just the acceleration of the long term carting off of the sand.

So, with your comment I took to watching the webcam that HVERI has set up at the Hale's hale and hoped that over time I could gain a more nuanced understanding of what is happening. And, as a result, I've put together the following montage of imagines showing the changes since before the dredging began up to about a week ago when the movement that was pretty steady appears to have come to rest... 



Note that the above images are cropped from the larger so as to focus on the area of change. Also, the quality of the earlier images, taken as screenshots from Youtube vids, aren't as sharp as the later, but still they serve to show the evolution over time. Also note that the perspective, from the Hale's hale, isn't the best angle for a full appreciation of the changes, but anyone who has spent time at the park will be able to appreciate them..

[ironyak]

While the channel was open, there were new deposits of sand building up on the back/mauka/towards-the-road edge of the pond. While this made for some new soft sand entrances, the trend seemed to indicate that if the channel stayed open, sand could just keep filling in the pond area near the ramp. Instead, what seems to be the steep transition right near the breakwater apparently acts as the initial build-up point so much of the material catches there first and then accumulates.

The current sandy berm reminds me of when it initially formed in late 2018. Over time, and with some larger swells, more material including rocks and one-man boulders got deposited and it just kept growing. Not sure if this time will be any different, but should be clear that there is lots of material still moving about that negates any dream of part-time fixes fully solving the issue of boat access. (Maybe you can keep the channel open with a daily on-again off-again schedule, but by doing so, can you also keep dredging the rest of the pond area that grows shallower with every wave?)