Scores of volunteers have been sweating and toiling in the mud the past five years to restore the Alakoko fishpond on Kauai, one of the last remaining ponds built by Native Hawaiians some 600 years ago.

Fred “Peleke” Flores, project manager with Malama Hule‘ia, has taught, motivated and labored alongside them. The nonprofit’s mission is to bring back a vital ecosystem in the Huleia estuary that yielded food and sustained the harmonious interconnection of life valued by ancient Hawaiians.

“Usually, it’s all asses and elbows. We’re always bending over, working, working, working,” he said.

Until recently, monthly community workdays have focused on hacking away and removing 26 acres of invasive mangrove trees that took over and polluted the fishpond. But even when the volunteers aren’t around, Flores and a few members of Malama Hule‘ia are still out there every day.

A major part of the endeavor involves educating young students on weekly field trips to “get their faces out of their screens and their hands into the dirt … and find the good in it,” he said.

For his hard work, Flores received the the Ellison S. Onizuka Memorial Award from the National Education Association in July. He was nominated by the Hawaii State Teachers Association’s Kauai chapter, whose members praised his ability to make the restoration relevant to any subject under study for all grade levels.

Flores said, “I’m just trying to give back to the land and connect the younger generation to the land.”

Named for the late astronaut from Hawaii, the award honors those who significantly affect education, achievement and equal opportunity for Asians and Pacific Islanders. “This (award) is for all of us,” he said, including other organizations throughout the state involved in caring for the environment.

Whether students were learning about tides, moon phases, water quality, invasive species, phytoplankton or history, Flores tried to make the lessons relevant and palatable, akin to “hiding all the vegetables in the soup so the kids didn’t realize they were learning.” In the process, third graders loved lopping off the mangrove roots, and preschoolers enjoyed pulling the seedlings out of the dirt.

Flores never received a teaching degree when he majored in Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii with a focus on malama aina (caring for the land). But the Onizuka award is a “pretty awesome” recognition of 24 years of aina-based work around the state. Humbled to be selected, and wearing a suit for the first time in his life, he didn’t realize how prestigious the award was until he got to Philadelphia for the ceremony and saw “all the heavy hitters” also being honored.

The significance of the fishpond, built alongside the Huleia River, lies in being the first brackish pond in the state and the largest one in the Nawiliwili Bay Watershed. (It’s an estuary, a coastal body of water where freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with salty ocean water.)

The 39-acre pond is separated from the Huleia River by a 2,000-foot rock wall and 700 feet of the dirt embankment of an old taro patch. It’s uniquely constructed, as the inner perimeter of the rock wall is lined with a sand/dirt berm. Old legends give credit to the mythical menehune in lending a hand in its construction, historians say.

Malama Hule‘ia is now focusing on rebuilding the rock wall, which has been damaged by storms, floods and king tides over the centuries, and most recently by mangrove. It has been repeatedly rebuilt in different styles of construction and materials, and is considered a remarkable feat of engineering by historians.

Flores hopes to complete the project by the end of this year or by mid-2025 at the latest, depending on the weather and tides. As a master in the craft of Hawaiian dry-set stone masonry, Flores holds a monthly class to teach about 60 volunteers how to rebuild the wall. It’s no easy feat, as they usually work in muddy waist-high water that obscures any view of the 3 to 4 feet of rock below. (Above the water, the rock wall extends 2 to 3 feet.)

Half of the 40 to 60 volunteers who come out on workdays, held once a month, have been regulars, many of them teachers in different fields. Most share a vision of Hawaii developing sustainable food sources so the state is no longer dependent on Matson container ships from the mainland. The volunteers also keep coming back because they want to see the progress made, he suspects.

“We’re a small nonprofit trying to do the work of a whole village. … (Back then) the outcome was having more food,” he said.

Yet, Flores said the Alakoko Fishpond was more than a food source for Hawaiians; it was like an “incubator for the bigger icebox that was the ocean.” It was the source of an entire food chain, beginning with the phytoplankton bloom that attracted and fed millions of baby fish, which in turn were eaten by other wildlife (mostly birds and crabs) and larger fish along the shoreline. Such larger fish — like akuli, papio, oio and manini — were caught in the hukilau nets that fed the village en masse, nothing like the small-scale catches rigged for tourists, he said.

“It was hukilau and these kind of activities that fed the village, not the fishponds. The fishponds were the heartbeat of having those kinds of activities continue,” he said, adding that old Hawaiian stories speak more about protecting the fishponds instead of just catching fish from them.

It is all part of the interconnection and balance of the original Hawaiian ahupuaa (land division) system, which recognizes how different elements from the mountains to the ocean influence the other to create a thriving ecosystem, he said.

“A lot of the kupuna (who are) still alive, when they were little kids, remember the pond when it was clean,” unpolluted by mangrove and the acres of sediment that built up around its roots, he said.

“A lot of them came up to the lookout, and you see them start crying and saying, ‘I never thought I’d see this pond clean again.’ I say, ‘Wait, it’s not fully clean but it’s close, we’re getting there,’” said Flores. “That’s helped,” he added, encouraged by their words.

Get involved

For information about Malama Hule‘ia, visit malamahuleia.org.