JPG

“All along the Kona-Kohala Coast, ancient anchialine ponds reflect those long-ago days when thatched hales (houses) and shady shelter caves furnished homes for fishermen and their families. Some of these ponds have been preserved at resorts but none have been so well restored and documented as Kalahuipua’a, a series of four main ponds and three smaller ones on the grounds of Mauna Lani.

Bottom samples from the ponds have been dated back to 250 B.C. but no one truly knows when the ancient aqua culture system was constructed. In this area of the Big Island, aqua culture ponds were of two types. Some were built of stones walling out the ocean from a naturally occurring protected bay. Others, like those along the Kona-Kohala Coast were inland ponds where water collected in pools at the shoreline, and because of the porous rock, rose and fell with the tide. Named after the Greek word anchialos, which means “near the sea,” such ponds are thought to be unique to Hawai’i. At Kalahuipua’a, as in many other locales, fish such as mullet and awa that were bred and fattened in the ponds, were reserved for the ali’i, the royal classes.

The loko, ponds, spread across 15 acres. The largest, Kalahuipua’a, covers five acres to a depth of about 18 feet, and is one of the best examples of a functioning fishpond in modern Hawai’i. Of six other ponds, Kahinawao, Waipuhi, Waipuhi Iki, Hope’ala, Milokukahi, and Manoku, only one other is connected to the ocean with a sluice gate, or makaha, as is Kalahuipua’a. The makaha is a wooden grate in either side of the fishpond wall that allows for water circulation and lets small fish swim in from the ocean. Once in the ponds they grow too large to swim back out. The flow of water through the makaha also controlled the algae growth and oxygenation.” Source: Coffee Times