Posted on: Friday, June 14, 2002

Conservatory plans to buy beach

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer

More endangered hawksbill turtles haul out to lay eggs on the remote black sand beach under the Kamehame cinder cone than on all the other beaches in Hawai'i combined.

That's the prime motivation for The Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i, which plans to buy the 24 acres around the beach from C. Brewer's Ka'u Agribusiness, to protect hawksbills, known in Hawaiian as 'ea, and also other species, such the green sea turtle and the Hawaiian monk seal, that use the beach.

Kamehame Beach, whose sand is a mixture of black and brown basalt particles and bits of coral and shell, is extremely isolated, lying along the rocky southeast coast of the Big Island, about four miles south of the village of Pahala. The eroding side of Kamehame hill looms over the beach.

If humans come around, they normally come by boat because the land access is so incredibly rough, said Sam Gon III, director of science for The Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i.

But even without humans, there are significant threats for the hawksbill clutches of up to 200 turtle eggs laid in the sand. Rats attack them, and mongooses, ants and even pigs will come out of the lava fields and dig up the clutches to feed on the eggs.

"Thirty-four of the 53 known nesting females in the state nest at Kamehame. The success of those nests is highly dependent upon a dedicated group of volunteers who monitor the nests day and night" during the June to November nesting season, said Larry Katahira, natural resources manager at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.

Ka'u Agribusiness has agreed to sell the remote coastal acreage to the conservancy if it can raise the sale price of $85,000 by July 31.