A fledgling card game about Hawaiian seabirds is getting ready to leave the nest. Unlike another classic card game, you don’t go fish — you go fly, or “E Lele!”
A Kickstarter campaign was launched in July for “E Lele!” to fund its first production run.
In the game, players build habitats and grow their colonies while avoiding environmental threats and learning about the seabirds that nest on and visit the islands.
Hāna residents Scott Crawford and Heidi Lea worked with the Maui Nui Seabird Recovery Project to marry the fun of the game with scientific accuracy. Each card features seabird names and basic phrases in ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi.
HPR spoke with Crawford, Lea and Jay Penniman from the Maui Nui Seabird Recovery project to learn how “E Lele!” took flight.
“We were just camping out at Nuʻu Bay in Kaupō … and we were playing another board game that was about birds, but it had so many different parts and pieces,” Lea told HPR. “And I was thinking, wouldn’t it be great if there was a game like Go Fish, but it could be about birds?”
For Penniman, “E Lele!” was an opportunity to promote environmental awareness about Hawaiʻi’s native seabirds.
“This activity, for us, was just an ideal bringing together of our mission and letting people know what nā manu o ke kai are all about,” he told HPR.
Of course, since it’s a card game, the fun is just as important as the facts.
“It felt really important that we try to make the game well, balancing ... playability and fun,” Crawford said.
“I feel like games can be a really powerful educational tool, but to learn from it, you have to want to play it, and to play it, it has to be fun.”
“E Lele!” comes at a time when Hawaiʻi’s native bird populations are under severe threat, and that dire reality is something the game aims to address.
“It's very true that there are a lot of threats and the birds have populations have been decimated,” Penniman said.
“But I think that the example that Maui Nui Seabird Recovery Project is one of is that if you work together and educate the community … you can protect the birds.”
More information about the game can be found on its Kickstarter campaign page here.
This story aired on The Conversation on July 23, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
