Decaying whale parts at Honolulu Landing

[Wao nahele kane]

Just what the subject implies. Some of the bones are a >foot in diameter. Also large junks of flesh—20 foot or so in length—tumlbing in the surf near the bones. 
   

[leilanidude]

They sure like to wash up there. There was one a few years ago - it really smelled bad.

[ironyak]

Sounds like time to break out the old scrimshawing tools.

The acquisition of that 30 acre makai lot and 334 acre mauka of Beach Road lot has been completed and are now Hawai'i County public property?

[Wao nahele kane]

● Cultural Respect:
In Native Hawaiian culture, whales are considered sacred ancestors (kupuna) and physical manifestations of the ocean god Kanaloa. Disturbing or removing their remains is considered a deep desecration.

[ironyak]

Well, there's this:
https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/the-cultu...in-hawaii/
"“The beaches upon which whales’ bodies often washed up were held especially sacred and were guarded by alii (chiefs) and kahuna (priests),” says Sam Ohu Gon, senior scientist and cultural advisor for the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii."

So what were you doing there?

And this:
https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/lei-niho-palaoa/
"The ornaments of the nobility consisted of head-dresses of feathers, palaoas, or charms of bone suspended from the neck, and necklaces and bracelets of shells. (Kalakaua)

The lei niho palaoa were among the most significant symbols of rank in Hawai‘i. (Bishop Museum)
...
From the ivory of this creature. The highly prized ‘Palaoa’ or whale-tooth pendant is carved. This palaoa wa only worn by ali‘I of highest rank.” (Kanahele)
...
Many lei niho palaoa worn by members of high rank in Hawaiian society were crafted from materials such as bone or coral. However, lei niho palaoa made of sperm whale ivory were reserved only for the highest of aliʻi, or chiefs."

Maybe go back and ask your AI for a more thorough answer based on knowledgeable sources and to provide references? Or just take a trip to the Bishop Museum, even a virtual one.

[Wao nahele kane]

It’s entirely reasonable to question whether you actually live here, ironyak. And if you do, your knowledge of the area is embarrassingly lacking for someone claiming to be a resident.

Honolulu Landing is a well-known small stretch of coastline for anyone who’s lived in the Pahoa area for more than a year — and many people throughout Puna recognize it. For quite a few of us, it’s part of our regular commute to and from Pahoa.

The area is where Government Beach Road runs close to the ocean South of Hawaiian Beaches/Shores, offering clear views of the water as you drive through. It’s often misty with ocean spray, and during high winds or storms, waves frequently wash across the roadway. Technically, the sides of the road fall within the public transit corridor, and since the high-water mark and wave debris reach into that corridor, the area is part of the public beach access. People regularly park there and visit the shoreline.

Your claim that Honolulu Landing is some kind of private, restricted land — not part of any public roadway or beach corridor — is laughable. Even more absurd was your initial insinuation that Native Hawaiians were about to engage in some traditional craft simply because whale bones were present there. As if locals were preparing to haul them off and start carving. Once again, it highlights your profound ignorance about Hawaii and your endless habit of spinning wild, delusional stories about things you clearly know nothing about.

I’m flattered by your strange fixation on me, but I’m already spoken for — and definitely not interested. Good luck continuing your impressive run as the Punaweb resident social misfit.

[ironyak]

kane - It’s entirely reasonable to question whether you actually live here, ironyak. And if you do, your knowledge of the area is embarrassingly lacking for someone claiming to be a resident.

You have a strange sense of reasonable then as I was cutting my teeth on waves at Harry K and hotdogs at Walter's years before you came over from Kona/PNW, brah.

All I was asking, as you do live down there, if the County had finished acquiring that ~360 acres of land, as it was supposed to finish up in March, but there has been no news.

Are you saying what you refer to as Honolulu Landing is not part of 140030190000 (linked to above also) as it has been for certain private land (reasonable shore access accommodations aside) or that everyone else apparently thinks the County has been trying for years to acquire some other Honolulu Landing?

• Ashley Kierkiewicz - "Honolulu Landing was added to the County’s PONC list in the 2000s, with a resolution authorizing acquisition in 2007. While the land was never secured, the parcels are now up for sale, creating a rare opportunity for the County to finally protect this significant site."
  
• Hawai‘i County in talks with landowners to acquire historic Honolulu Landing - Sep 18 2025
  
• Council OK’s effort to acquire Honolulu Landing property - Sep 23 2025
  
• Hawai‘i County purchase of Honolulu Landing in Puna in escrow - Jan 15 2026 - "Hawai‘i County is set to acquire Honolulu Landing, a 364-acre coastal property in Puna, for $3.7 million. The purchase is in escrow and expected to close by March, county officials told ASD."
  

So yeah, anyone actually know if this land purchase has wrapped up, or do I need to pass some other malahini purity test first? (I have no shrubberies but my favorite color is blue... no, yellow... ;)

[Wao nahele kane]

Ironyak, as is usual, you’ve managed to conflate multiple unrelated points in your posts (#3, #5, and #7), and it’s frankly exhausting to untangle the mess you created. You’re lumping the specific public shoreline spot known as Honolulu Landing proper — where the actual decaying whale bones and flesh chunks washed up — together with the much larger county land acquisition. Then you toss in your ridiculous scrimshaw suggestion and museum artifacts as if they somehow disprove cultural respect for whale remains. It’s a sloppy tangle of half-baked ideas.

Let’s cut through your confusion:

Honolulu Landing proper is nothing more than the small, rugged coastal stretch with the narrow one-lane road running right beside the ocean. That is the exact public-access spot where the large bones and 20-foot flesh sections were seen tumbling in the surf. It sits inside the 30-acre makai parcel of the county acquisition.

The larger “Honolulu Landing deal” is the county’s 364-acre acquisition — roughly 30 acres of shoreline plus 334 acres mauka of Beach Road. This purchase, advanced through the Public Access, Open Space, and Natural Resources Preservation Fund, is meant to protect the entire ahupuaʻa, including Sand Hill (Pu‘u One), old stone walls, trails, ranch remnants, and many other sacred cultural sites. Honolulu Landing proper is within the land acquisition, but the whole acquisition area is not all “Honolulu Landing.” You have wrongly conflated the two by treating the entire 364-acre package as if it were nothing more than an expanded version of the tiny public landing spot. It isn’t. The bulk of the acquired land consists of inland/mauka areas and other features that have zero direct connection to the specific beach where the whale remains appeared. You acted as if the whale bones at the landing proper automatically implicated or were resolved by the entire county buyout, which spreads your confusion across the whole deal.

Just because I live down here doesn’t give me some magical crystal ball or inside scoop on the county deal that nobody else has. The purchase has been clearly moving forward through the resolution and funding process. Now it’s simply a matter of time to close on the final details.

Your scrimshaw comment is especially ignorant. You suggested breaking out the old tools and then linked to sources that actually prove the opposite of what you claimed. Those beaches were held sacred and closely guarded by aliʻi and kahuna — not thrown open for anyone to haul away bones and carve souvenirs. Whale remains were subject to strict kapu. Lei niho palaoa were reserved exclusively for the highest chiefs and were made only under tightly controlled conditions. The few whale teeth in the Bishop Museum are historical artifacts from elite contexts, not proof that “it wasn’t forbidden to disturb whale bones in native Hawaii.” That’s a weak, dishonest leap. Scrimshaw is a haole Yankee whaler tradition anyway, not a Native Hawaiian practice. Federal and state law still prohibits unauthorized collection or carving of marine mammal remains.

The county’s acquisition of the larger area actually strengthens the need to respect the cultural and genealogical significance of the place. It is not an invitation to treat sacred whale remains as craft material. Whales are aumakua and manifestations of Kanaloa. Letting their remains return naturally to the ocean is the proper way — not your proposed desecration.

And while we’re at it, your question about why I was even at Honolulu Landing — a very public place accessible by road — was creepy as shit. Pretending that simply being there somehow broke Hawaiian sacred land laws just because a whale had washed up is also pure bullcrap. It’s a public shoreline, not some off-limits kapu zone you get to police with snide remarks.

In short, your conflation of the small public landing spot with the much bigger preservation deal — and your false assumption that the entire acquisition area is all “Honolulu Landing” containing sacred sites in the same way — just muddies everything and reveals how little you actually understand. The cultural concerns I raised stand regardless of your attempts to twist them.

Now, I'm done kicking this proverbial dead whale. 

   

[ironyak]

I'm well aware of where Honolulu Landing is, having visited plenty both before and after all the shiny new asphalt was added to Beach road. You mentioned Honolulu Landing which made me wonder if the related land deal was complete as it was supposed to be wrapping up about now. It was an attempt to get some info from the old coconut telegraph, to give you a chance to share what you might know, as you live right there. You instead wanted to use your pedophilic billionaire's lobotomized stochastic parrot to create some half-assed cultural sensitivity gotcha (you're the one taking pics like a fresh off the plane tourist at where, some more in the know might say, is sacred land, were you so concerned about "Cultural Respect") and go on about how that area isn't private land, and how I don't live here, on and on, demonstrating little more than all that you don't know (when you don't block people, you might actually learn a thing or two from them or about them ;)

For most of my time in Hawai'i, that stretch from Wa'a Wa'a to Honolulu Landing was the mud and mosquito filled wrong turn from 4 corners as we had everything along the actually Red Road from snorkling the Kapoho tide tools, to swimming at Pohoiki, to papaya pancakes under the palms at Kaimu, to body boarding the long stretch of black sand before catching a shower at Harry K Brown, grabbing red hotdogs for dinner at Uncle Walter's, hanging out with peeps in Kalapana Gardens when it was still garden-like, to entering HVNP through the Wahaula Visitor Center entrance and visiting that almost never used campground down there outside of us, a barn owl, and a road full of cockroaches. Lots of amazing places and experiences lost to time and the unending cycle of lava all before your arrival, as some of us are O.G. malahini, not new fish on the Puna block. ;)

Not sure why you want to treat every encounter as some sort of ideological one-upsmanship, but whatever floats your boat I guess, given the confusion appears to be all yours. Thanks though for summarizing all the links I already have read and provided to you as apparently you don't know anything more than that.

ETA: Hey, look, how timely - while my off-the-cuff remark may have been haole af, e kala mai, at least I'm not actually doing what has been specifically requested not to do, ye who are so wise in the ways of "Cultural Respect".
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2026/04/0...ers-point/
"State officials are continuing to ask the public to stay clear of sperm whale carcass parts that may still be floating along Oahu’s southwest coast.
...
Cultural practitioners ask the public to refrain from drones, photography, video and social media posting out of respect for the kupuna palaoa, or endangered sperm whale." (More at link)

[Punatang]

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my favorite color is blue... no, yellow...  - Ironyak


Nice save Brah!  No AckBlue . Might get plenty Blanched and then be as white as kapu iwi kupuna at Honolulu Landing. Non-native lies and nefariosity fo sho!  No ack!
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