Honolulu, HI—After 35 years, the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program (Hawaiʻi Sea Grant) will conclude its leading role in the Hanauma Bay Education Program. Hawaiʻi Sea Grant is proud of its unique partnership with the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Parks and Recreation. Together, they built a national model for promoting marine conservation through education, stewardship, and community engagement.

The program was born in 1990 out of growing public concern over the environmental impacts of more than three to four million annual visitors to the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve. The City’s Hanauma Bay Management Plan called for reducing visitor numbers, curbing commercial activity, and providing every visitor with structured environmental education to help protect the bay’s fragile ecosystem. To meet these goals, the City partnered with Hawaiʻi Sea Grant to provide curriculum, research, staffing, and materials. Together, they established the Hanauma Bay Education Program—the first initiative in the nation to combine on-site visitor education with active stewardship of a protected marine area.

“Through this arrangement, the City gained the prestige of having the State’s highest institute of education as its Hanauma Bay partner, and also gained access to other University experts, such as planners, architects, translators, lawyers, geologists, botanists, historians, etc. At the same time, the University of Hawai‘i had a showcase for its future teachers and scientists, and became recognized as a model for other areas around the world,” said Alan Hong, former manager of the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve. “Wholehearted cooperation between City and State politicians, especially during election years, is understandably a rarity. However, the Hanauma Bay partnership between the City’s Department of Parks and Recreation and the State’s University of Hawaiʻi so perfectly fulfills the intent of both to preserve this unique site by limiting admission, educating visitors, and restricting commercialism, that it has proudly served our community uninterrupted for 35 years.”

Since its inception, the program has educated an estimated 38 million residents and visitors about the cultural and ecological significance of the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve while promoting responsible practices to protect its coral reef ecosystem. Hawai‘i Sea Grant education specialists designed interpretive displays, trained volunteer docents, and developed the award-winning orientation film that every visitor views before entering the bay, ensuring conservation messages reached audiences from local schoolchildren to international tourists.

Michelle Nekota, former director of the City and County of Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation, reflected on her experience: “As a former director, I had the privilege of working with the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program’s Hanauma Bay Education Program for seven years from 2014 to 2020. During that period, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the education program would educate on average approximately 800,000 visitors annually and approximately 200 school groups and other organizations through field trips at the bay. Their volunteer docents contributed between 10,000–11,000 hours annually and made invaluable contributions towards promoting marine conservation and stewardship through educational activities. It’s been a very successful and longstanding partnership with the City and one that I valued greatly.”

Today, the Hanauma Bay Education Program, having been recognized nationally and internationally as a best management practice in conservation, continues to provide daily education, outreach, and interpretive services, supported by a dedicated team of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant staff and hundreds of community volunteers.

After 35 years, the Hanauma Bay Education Program stands as a powerful example of what can be achieved through visionary partnerships, innovative science communication, and a shared commitment to mālama ʻāina. As the City and County of Honolulu takes the lead in building on the program’s success and carrying its legacy forward through its recent solicitation for proposals for interested organizations to provide education services for all visitors at the bay, Hawaiʻi Sea Grant turns its focus onward and toward expanding support for conservation, education, and community engagement across Hawaiʻi and throughout the Pacific region.

“The protection of Hanauma Bay, one of Hawaiʻi’s most visited natural sites, hinges on people understanding that the coastal and ocean environments are living entities,” said Dr. Darren Lerner, director of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant. “Protecting this living reef ecosystem requires acknowledging our deep connection to and dependence on it for our own well-being. We are honored that Sea Grant’s leadership helped create and sustain a program that serves as a global model for community-driven conservation and we look forward to developing new partnerships in support of protecting Hawaiʻi’s treasured places and inspiring future generations to care for and restore our ocean home.”