HUALALAI FIELD RESEARCH DAY APRIL 4, 2024
Laura Jim, Marc Rice and 8 HPA STRP students traveled to Hualalai Four Seasons Resort on thursday (4/4/24) to capture, tag and conduct a health assessment of resident honu along the shoreline from Kumukea Beach to Kukio Beach. We were joined by Tyler and Maika’i from the Hawaii State Division of Aquatic Resources and George Balazs for the work day. We arrived at 0815 and set up our work site. The surf was pretty rough along Kumukea Beach and we had to move our capture work to Kukio Beach which is more protected. We were able to capture two honu at Kumukea and 9 at Kukio Beach. Six of the honu were new captures and 5 were recaptures from previous trips. One of the recaptures (H76) had moved to Kukio from Mauna Lani where it had been captured and tagged in October of 2023 (a distance of ~25 miles).
All 11 of the honu appeared healthy and were weighed, measured, tagged and released by the research team.
Below are the growth rate calcuations for the 5 recaptures. Note that H 76 was the honu that moved from Mauna Lani Bay to Kukio Bay some time between October 2023 and April 2024.
| Turtle Number | capture date 1 | SCL | capture date 2 | SCL | C date2 – C date1 (days) | Growth Rate cm/yr |
| H 76 | 10/24/19 | 57.1 | 4/4/24 | 57.4 | 1624 | 0.07 |
| H 112 | 3/8/22 | 43.5 | 4/4/24 | 47.0 | 758 | 1.69 |
| H 113 | 3/8/22 | 40.8 | 4/4/24 | 42.0 | 758 | 0.58 |
| H 194 (H 58) | 10/22/19 | 41.3 | 4/4/24 | 48.2 | 1626 | 1.55 |
| H 207 | 5/2/23 | 41.6 | 4/4/24 | 42.7 | 338 | 1.19 |
