Gisele Nelson - Hawaii Wildlife Fund
Week 3

            My internship has been full of trips to remote beaches in search of turtles and to beaches that need some cleaning up. This week Bill and I made it to a far different location than those isolated beaches, Waiohinu and Kamehame. On Wednesday we went to Honolulu, Oahu to attend the Hawaii Conservation Conference. Honolulu is home to big hotels, major shopping, and Waikiki beach. The busy streets, stores, restaurants, and high rises of Honolulu go along the coast and are filled with tourists coming back from the beach. Honolulu Convention Center was the perfect venue for 800 to 900 people to get together at the Hawaii Conservation Conference. It was gratifying to see that many people from a small state get together to talk about the environment and making it green, or rather, protecting what’s blue. Hawaii is surrounded by more ocean than anywhere in the world, so one could see how the water surrounding them is an important matter. This is also a concern, as Earth’s surface is more than 70 percent water. Therefore, the “green movement” does involve more blue than the name gives credit for.

            In the span of three days the conference covered everything between land, sea, and energy, even to the microscopic level. One afternoon, I sat in the alternative energies symposium where we talked about thermal energy conversion systems, photovoltaics, and biofuels. Another afternoon, I went to an aquatic biota session where someone discussed the utility of DNA sequence comparisons for identification of algae. I use these two examples to display how broad the variety of topics was and how complex some of the sessions were.  I also got to attend sessions that talked about the importance of interns for the future and what some of the many interning opportunities there are for people in Hawaii. Some of the topics were certainly easier to understand, but everything had one clear focus: conservation. The conference successfully brought across points of protecting the islands and preserving mother Earth.

            At the beginning of the conference everyone received a bag with a book, 50 Ways to Save the Ocean by David Helvarg, a schedule of daily events, and a travel coffee mug. My favorite thing in this goody bag was indeed the coffee mug. These cups provided more efficacy than just being a free mug. They told us to hold on to them and bring them to the convention everyday. When I arrived in the morning, I filled my mug with coffee. During break at ten o’clock I filled it with tea, at lunch I filled it with lemonade. I averaged using it about three times a day. Do the math, and I used it at least 9 times over a three-day period. Now add this to the equation: 800 people got coffee mugs; nine multiplied by 800 is 7,200. That’s 7,200 plastic or Styrofoam cups not used. Now that’s a step towards conservation. I will take this chance to remind you that you should bring a mug with you before work, and it will make quite the difference, especially over a lifetime.

            The discussions that I felt had the biggest impact were the ones composed in “The Big Picture” session. They covered things like, climate change and endangered species conservation, beaches as the first victim of global warming in Hawaii, and management responses to high waters, receding coasts, and low lands. They brought into perspective what is happening to this environment as we leave and create more and more scars. The ocean temperature rising is a calamity of it’s own. With only a 1.5 degrees centigrade increase, storm activity in the Pacific will greatly enhance, which will in turn raise the cloud base of the island, therefore, distorting the distribution of dry, mesic, and wet land on the islands. Climate change alters the landscape structure of the Hawaiian ecosystem, which puts many of Hawaii’s native plants in danger. They discussed the change in sea level and the effects it will have if it continues. We’ve doubled the melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet to 57 cubic miles per year. This is a lot of added water to the ocean, and we also have to put thermal expansion into consideration. With these patterns, it’s likely that the coast of the islands will become flooded. They proactively talked about these issues with facts, warning, and ways to improve. They talked about better ways to consider development for the future and ways to progress and bring up to date what’s already here. The islands are known for their crystal clear beaches, enjoyed by locals and visitors, and we don’t want to just be left with resort pools when the shores erode and the waves inundate.

            Although the conference was held in a very different setting than I have been exposed to, it brought up valuable points about matching science and management. I enjoyed meeting other people, from a range of students and professionals, who talked about conservation like it was there job. Everyone plays an important role, whether they are an ornithologist with a PhD, an undergrad studying hotel and restaurant management, or even a Pacific Ocean scuba diver.