LOKO IʻA [Freshwater Fishponds]:
KOʻA KAI [Ocean Gardens]
Historical Overview of Hawaiian Islands 222 Freshwater Fishponds, 114 on Oʻahu in 1880. making 1 milion pounds of fish per year!
Native Hawaiians have been living in the small islands of the Hawaiian archipelago for the past 100 generations. Over time our ancestors developed unique water management systems to feed an ever increasing population. Before foreigners arrived with their foreign diseases, the population of Hawaiʻi is estimated to have been 1 million people, all being fed from the land and surrounding oceans . Today the Hawaiʻi hosts 1.4 million people with 90% of food being imported from California. Part of the Hawaiian Ancestoral strategy for increased food production was to build massive freshwater fish ponds, some as large as 523 acres, to increase the productivity of raising fish. Thus a s late as 1880, Oʻahu had 114 freshwater fishponds, comprising 3,600 acres creating 1 million pounds of fish per year, just on the land! Today there are only 13 freshwater fishponds left on Oʻahu and man y of them are polluted. However, many Native Hawaiians today are working to revive these ponds, creating non-profit foundations to do so!
While, Loko iʻa, or fishponds, are an amazing example of innovation, technology, and fishery production, o pen spaces, or Koʻa Kai, outside of the boundaries set by fences, and rock walls, were tended addressing reproduction, cultivation, and harvest. Experts understood productivity through keen observation and awareness of the natural ebb and flow of the world around them and were able to tend and harvest from open spaces successfully. Hawaiian Ancestors understood that the now termed "wild" spaces were very much tended spaces that were reciprocal in nature dependent on input for an equal or greater output. Hence, Ocean Gardens!