A key project that has been removing marine debris from Hawaiʻi's surrounding waters for four years is at risk of losing its funding after August.
Hawaiʻi Pacific University’s Center for Marine Debris Research launched its Bounty Project in 2022, which was founded on the idea to pay fishers for the marine debris they brought in. The project is one of three separate efforts to remove debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which sits between Hawaiʻi and California.
Katie Stevens, the project’s manager, said the team saw the fishing boats as "opportunity vessels.”
“These fishing vessels are already out there, so it reduces the extra emissions, time and money to pay a crew to specifically go out there and clean it up,” Stevens said to HPR. “We saw that as an opportunity to utilize the fishing communities and give them an extra incentive to clean up the fishing grounds they're already using.”
Since its launch, the Bounty Project has collected over 200,000 pounds of marine debris, and roughly 80% of this is made up of derelict fishing gear, also known as “ghost gear.”
The project was initially funded by the NOAA Sea Grant for the first three years, which was replaced by $70,000 from the Ocean Conservancy’s Global Ghost Gear Initiative.
But that chunk of funding will expire at the end of the month.
A new $9,000 grant from the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation was recently secured, allowing the project to extend two additional months. But without another funding source, the center risks losing staff and similar projects after August.
“We would lose 10 staff, scientists, engineers, chemists, and all the other projects we're working on,” Stevens said. “For the past nine months to a year, we've been applying to as many things as possible, but with cuts to science funding and everyone’s budgets this year, we haven't received any.”
The majority of the project’s funding goes toward paying the fishers for the marine debris they bring in, but the center also supports developing efforts that repurpose or recycle the collected nets and ghost gear.
Stevens noted the team is working to recycle high-density polyethylene, which makes up things like milk jugs and laundry detergent, into asphalt to pave roads around the island. She also said the debris that is not recycled or given to H-POWER is donated to local artists or researchers.
“We want to create a circular economy in Hawaiʻi, keep it here, create products here, create jobs here, create skill training here,” Stevens said.
But without funding, Stevens said these efforts would cease, leading to a higher concentration of debris and putting marine life and coral reefs at risk.
“The way Hawaiʻi is positioned, it acts like a kind of a sieve of everything washing by, so that's why we get so much debris washing up,” she said. “It’s especially harmful because it’s designed to catch marine animals, so even when it's not being actively used, it's still performing that function of catching animals, and it very easily gets caught or bulldozes the coral, which we know is a very important habitat.”
