Focus
We made Hanauma Bay the serene place that it is

By Jack Sidener
A professor at the University of Hawai'i School of Architecture

"They" — the Department of Parks and Recreation and their contractors — are taking out buildings along Hanauma Bay's beach, and building new ones. But that won't make it natural. To do that, they'd have to take out the palm trees and sand as well.

Many areas known to offer natural beauty and a break from weekly activity are not completely natural. Human-made changes to Hanauma Bay go back to the 19th century. Advertiser library photo • Aug. 2, 2000

I don't like that; the pavilion represents a lost architecture of delight, and the snack bar was a service to the public. I should have protested before it was too late, and now I'm feeling guilty and angry. I don't like change, anyway. None of us do.

The irony is that those places we retreat to in order to find respite from the weekly cycles of frantic activity and constant change, those "natural" areas we try to preserve, are themselves undergoing constant change. Many, like Hanauma Bay, are not even completely natural.

Let's look at Hanauma Bay Natural Park, as it's now called. Look at the "Big Puka," or keyhole in the shallow table reef, the destination of most beginning snorkelers.

It turns out that the keyhole is easily accessible because of James Jones, author of "From Here to Eternity." As he revealed in his book, "WWII," he and his buddies were sent to Hanauma Bay after Pearl Harbor was bombed to set up a camp, and to establish observation posts at Koko Head and Makapu'u Point.

Windblown and bored, they appropriated some dynamite and cleared considerable coral from the keyhole to give themselves swimming room.

Human-made changes at Hanauma go back even further. In the 1890's ranchers planted kiawe (mesquite) and haole koa on the uplands for cattle fodder, and even the prickly pear cactus, all of which are still there. Still further back, early Hawaiian fishermen appropriated lava overhangs at the beach for fishing shelters, campfires, and apparently even burial sites.

A more severe intervention remains from the 1950s.

The laying of a telephone cable from the Mainland enlarged one of two natural passages through the reef, expanding the outlet for wave and tidal surges which took (and still takes) much of the natural sand with it. Since then, tons of sand periodically have been brought in from elsewhere to replenish the "natural" beach, to expand areas for sunbathing, and to satisfy conservation groups concerned about losing palm trees to undermining.

The ironies continue ö the palms are themselves unnatural, brought in to make the beach look "Hawaiian." The imported sand is finer than the original, and hangs suspended in the water far out into the bay. It ruins the clarity, eventually falling onto and choking the live coral.

Human-made structures, too, have evolved and continue to do so. Army camp latrines, which were converted to public conveniences for park goers in the 1950s, have been replaced by stone structures, and the upland keawe grove now sits in a sea of grass, sharing space with such ornamental trees as a pink shower and a tiger claw.

The shade pavilion, which should be left as a good example of park structure design of the 1960s, and its attendant snack bar down at the beach, have been condemned to "shorten stays in the lower park," as was noted in the Department of Parks and Recreation's Hanauma Bay Master Plan in 1992.

In other words, come but don't enjoy yourself too much. This attitude smacks of elitism, and should be re-examined. People need to be put into the equation.

Now the Parks Department, with its architects, Group 70, is constructing a "naturalistic" large visitors' pavilion, snack bar, and gift shop at the crater's upper rim. This promises to be a good architectural addition, and helpful in educating visitors as to how to act responsibly when venturing out into the keyholes. But it doesn't help make the beach itself a welcome place.

I suppose that next the lifeguard towers and their surfboards will be painted beige, to look more "natural," thereby losing their visibility to snorkelers who use them for orientation, as they struggle to find the channel in high waves.

Signage and other safety warning devices, the bane of environmental purists, should in fact be enlarged and made more visible. In recent weeks, high winds have piled up the water inside the reef, and in seeking its outlet through the human-made cable channel this water has been rushing out with a strong current.

Several inexperienced visitors have drowned; the discrete warning sign on the beach is not enough.

There needs to be a balance between the quest for naturalism and the provision of facilities for safety and convenience. These can be designed with sensitivity, but they shouldn't be made to be invisible — good design can uplift the human spirit as well as can elimination of human's evidence.

So what is natural? The kiawe trees? The foreign sand? Shouldn't the "un-natural" be celebrated as well as the natural? It's American to "celebrate the beauty of the wilderness and the glory of its taming simultaneously," as Sam Howe Verhovek said in a recent New York Times article.

My ideal Hanauma Bay visitor exhibit would call attention to the original ranchers, to James Jones and his coral clearance, to the changes (positive and negative) brought on by importing tons of sand each year, and most of all to the incredible efforts of the lifeguards.

Last month I watched one lifeguard paddle the width of the bay twice, then run the length of the beach twice, all in the space of 15 minutes, to assure that it was free of stinging jellyfish. Another paddled out at high speed and circuited a roiling Witches Brew, an exposed area halfway out the Bay, to assist someone who'd fallen into that dangerous body of water. May their towers stay International Safety Orange, and may I again be able to watch them from the shade of the pavilion.