A year ago this week, the 16-day Maunaloa eruption on the Big Island came to an end. Scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory were able to make that call with confidence thanks to research by geophysicist James "Jim" Kauahikaua.
Kauahikaua died in Hilo on Oct. 8, 2023. He was 72.
He served as the observatory's scientist-in-charge from 2004 to 2015 — the first Native Hawaiian to hold that position.
"He was a magician finding stuff in the old newspaper articles. He would sort through everything, all the sources of data. What he came up with is that once the Maunaloa eruption was over, and lava had quit coming out of the vent, they never restart, at least in the last 200 years," said Ken Hon, the current scientist-in-charge and a longtime friend and colleague.
"Jim was not only curious and interested, but he was passionate, and he was passionate about doing things right," Hon said. "Everything Jim did, he brought that intensity to it. He had a love for exploring things."
Hon said Kauahikaua spent a good part of his career trying to reconcile two pieces of himself: his science and his Hawaiian culture.
"I think it was his thinking about how does my scientific brain — where I'm very analytical and trying to prove things — work with my Hawaiian brain, where I have a set of beliefs about how you should treat the land," Hon told HPR.
Hon said the lava destruction of Kalapana in 1990 impacted their approach to science because they had only experienced lava in the isolation of the national park.
"Kalapana, in my mind, was one of the last true authentic Hawaiian communities," Hon said. "So these families were all there. It was a very special place, and to see it changed was a really significant thing."
Hon said Kauahikaua tried to prioritize meaningful conversations over the years between scientists and the Native Hawaiian community as to how HVO should approach science in a way that felt more authentic to the people.
Kauahikaua, a Kamehameha Schools alum, first joined the observatory in 1988. He earned his bachelor's degree from Pomona College in California, and his graduate degrees from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Hon shared that the two of them, for about 20 years, watched action movies together in theaters.
"We would basically sit and eat lunch for two hours, and talk geology for two hours or something," Hon said. "He loved action movies, especially ones where nobody said anything. The less dialogue, the better."
Kauahikaua is survived by his wife, Jeri Gertz, and his daughter, Lilinoe Kauahikaua.
Revisit an HPR story featuring Kauahikaua from October 2018 about the complexities of Kīlauea.
This story aired on The Conversation on Dec. 11, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Sophia McCullough adapted this story for the web.
