UH-Hilo aquaculture center to open next year

By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau

HILO, Hawai'i — Thirteen years after coming to University of Hawai'i-Hilo to launch a working aquaculture center, Kevin Hopkins has all of the pieces in place for a major research and production project at a former sewage treatment plant in Keaukaha.

The centerpiece of the $7 million Pacific Aquaculture and Coast Resources Center will be two 80-foot-diameter sludge digester tanks that will converted into 400,000-gallon fish tanks. The 12.5-acre complex extends from Radio Bay near Hilo Harbor to the foot of Pua Street in the Hawaiian Homestead area mauka of Kalaniana'ole Avenue.

The center will be in operation next year, serving the university's agriculture and marine sciences departments and UH-Manoa's Sea Grant Program. By the end of next summer, Hopkins expects to have 100 or more students actively involved in projects.

Hopkins and his associates already are providing expertise for fish farming developments in Mexico and South America. Hopkins did similar work as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines and has since done consulting in the Middle East and Southeast Asia while obtaining a doctorate degree from Auburn University.

Now a professor at the UH-Hilo College of Agriculture, Hopkins came to Hawai'i in August 1988 to launch the aquaculture center. Despite setbacks in financing and in the courts and losing a prior site, he was able to get the county to donate the sewage plant and obtain adjoining state land after squatters twice had to be evicted.

The key financing was a recent $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The state and county also are providing support.

Hopkins said re-use of the sewage plant site was the vision of former Big Island Mayor Steve Yamashiro, who spent nearly $700,000 cleaning up the plant before turning it over to UH-Hilo.

The purpose of the center is to demonstrate and test possible marine crops, including shrimp, tilapia, exotic fish and various algae. Hopkins said the center will not compete with commercial growers.

"We will be filling a gap," he said. "Education will be our major component."

The availability of warm water from ocean shallows and nutrient-rich cold water from the deep increases the potential for the site, he said. Hilo is one of the few places in the world where the two elements are available nearly side by side, Hopkins said.

Warmer water is favored for algae production, while abalone, clams and other species require cold water.

The center will be able to use cold water from a 3,500-foot deep well drilled by geologists in an unrelated research project.

The center also will have an open-air lecture area, a native plant nursery and some exhibits for visitors.

The Keaukaha component is one of two aquaculture projects Hopkins has established at UH-Hilo. The other is a hatchery and fish food mill developed in conjunction with O'ahu's Oceanic Institute at Pana'ewa.

It does not entertain visitors because fish there are in quarantine for evaluation and testing.

"It's all coalescing now," Hopkins said.

The center has a governing council that includes two Native Hawaiian members from the Keaukaha Community Association, and a search is under way for a permanent director, since Hopkins is serving in an interim capacity.

"This will be the premier research center in the world in two years," he predicted.

Walter Dudley, newly appointed chairman of the UH-Hilo Marine Sciences Department, said the Keaukaha project is "very complementary to our students."

Students in the agriculture and marine sciences programs will be allowed to take classes under a cooperative agreement that crosslists courses.

Dudley said the Keaukaha laboratory and growing ponds will add to the quality of the fast-expanding marine sciences program. The department just moved into a $3 million center on the UH-Hilo campus.

At the center's campus headquarters, Hopkins is admired for his persistence in the face of setbacks on a previous proposal for a similar project at Onekahakaha Beach, where other squatters won the right to remain on county property.

"He's a guy who saw his project to the end," said Community Relations Director Gerald De Mello. "It's a credit to him for sticking in there. He might have laid back and given up. He had a good vision and strong thinking all the way."

Patrick Kahawaiola'a, president of the Keaukaha Community Association, which represents 420 families in the Hawaiian Homestead project, sees the development of the aquaculture center as "clearly a positive change" after 40 years of living with the sewer plant.

He believes community leaders have reached a good understanding with developers of the center.

"They know we don't want to have Hawaiians looking (from) outside the window," Kahawaiola'a said.

He said he supports the project because Native Hawaiians are involved in the marine studies program at UH-Hilo.

The university as a whole claims an enrollment that is 17.8 percent Hawaiian, the highest in the UH system.

Hopkins also has promised to help renew the fisheries of the Keaukaha coastline by releasing native species into nearshore waters.