#kamilo beach

My whole trip I looked at pictures of trash beach. Plastics everywhere. I expected heaps of plastic, but as we turned around the corner the beach actually looked... rather clean. A dam of wood blocked the beach, like someone wanted to stop the plastic from coming in. Looks can be deceiving though.

A few weeks ago, the Big Island was hit by two tropical storms. The East Coast of Hawaii (Puna), was hit hard. Trees cracked and large waves took the debris into the ocean. Because of the currents, some of it ended up at Kamilo Beach. The combination of large waves and wood changed it. The wood became a large dam, unfortunately not blocking any plastics. The beach was filled with small plastics, like colored glitter on a muffin.

I've seen this at the beach in Kailua, but that was just a thin line of debris. Here, I could not pick up sand without picking up plastic. Blue, turquoise and white were the dominant colors of the plastics. Sometimes I spotted a rare red piece. It was a fascinating, yet disturbing sight. 

In front of the wooden dam there were a lot of little twigs floating around in the water and microplastics. At first I couldn't see them, but after taking my hand out of the water it was covered with tiny dots.

The big shocker came when i starting walking inland. The big waves coated the beach with small plastics, but pushed all the large pieces into the bushes. I started recognizing things: a plastic container for shampoo, a buoy, a toothbrush and some rope. 

In the bushes large nets with lava rock and plastics blocked the way. I tried to pull a net out, but it was impossible to move it. The massacre went on and on as I struggled my way through the bushes.  

Sand, wood, lava rock and plastic, that is all there is on Kamilo Beach. Many times I thought I was crazy spending all this time and money to travel to a dirty beach in Hawaii. But this beach really shows how urgent our plastic soup problem is.