DLNR: Yacht caused 19,000 square feet of damage to reef
State officials will recommend fines, put onus on owner, not salvage company
A team of divers with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Aquatic Resources heads out to assess the damage to coral and live rock in the area near Honolua Bay on Tuesday. The team found that a yacht that was grounded in the area for about two weeks caused damage spanning more than 19,000 square feet. Photos courtesy DLNR
Damage is shown to coral in the area near Honolua Bay on Tuesday. A team of divers with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources assessed reef for damage on Tuesday after a grounded yacht was pulled from the area on Sunday.
A team of divers with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Aquatic Resources heads out to assess the damage to coral and live rock in the area near Honolua Bay on Tuesday. The team found that a yacht that was grounded in the area for about two weeks caused damage spanning more than 19,000 square feet. Photos courtesy DLNR
Damage is shown to coral in the area near Honolua Bay on Tuesday. A team of divers with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources assessed reef for damage on Tuesday after a grounded yacht was pulled from the area on Sunday.
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The Maui News
The grounded luxury yacht pulled from the rocky shoreline of Honolua Bay caused more than 19,000 square feet of damage to corals and reef live rock in the area, according to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Divers with the DLNR Division of Aquatic Resources returned to the area on Tuesday, two days after the yacht was finally freed from the rocks and reef and towed out to sea before it sank in 800 feet of ocean water about 3 miles off the coastline.
"We are looking for two things," Russell Sparks, the DAR aquatic biologist leading the assessment team, said in a news release Thursday. "The initial impact when the vessel grounded, and then the scars that occurred as the boat was dragged back off the flat reef surface into deeper water."
A four-person DAR team conducted a preliminary damage investigation the day after the vessel Nakoa broke free of its mooring and grounded just outside the Honolua-Mokuleia Bay Marine Life Conservation District on Feb. 20. The early assessment showed 19 coral colonies were damaged or destroyed during the initial grounding. For nearly two weeks, the Nakoa remained grounded in extremely shallow water along the basalt boulder shoreline in a high wave environment.
A post-grounding damage assessment this week found that the yacht caused damage covering at least 19,434 square feet. Highly visible, parallel scars extend 246 feet into deeper water, DLNR said. The first 49 feet consist of two deep "trench-like" scars, about 16 feet apart.
"In this area we found 101 impacted coral colonies, and damage to live rock covering nearly 2,099 square feet," Sparks said.
DLNR said it is not holding the salvage company or tug company that pulled the boat off the reef responsible for any damage but has made it clear that the yacht's owner will be responsible for salvage costs, as well as for damage to the live rock and coral.
Jim Jones, the owner of Noelani Yacht Charters, which operated the Nakoa yacht, could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday.
The salvage efforts, which the state said cost at least $460,000, turned into a roughly two-week process that began with removing barrels of fuel, batteries and other potentially hazardous materials from the yacht. Multiple efforts to extract it from the shoreline were hampered by poor weather and failed rigging that forced the contractor to return to Oahu for stronger equipment.
Given the cost and the fact that the yacht no longer contains fuel or other hazardous materials, the state has said it has no plans to pull the yacht from the seafloor at this time.
Following the DAR assessment, a team from the Maui Ocean Center Marine Institute collected more than 100 fragment of damaged coral and plans to recover additional fragments soon, DLNR said.
Sparks explained that the corals in the area are more "crust-like," with a lot of strong, robust cauliflower coral. These types of coral grow quickly, and "by and large doing nothing to this area, you know, two or three years from now, it should be more or less repopulated the way it was."
The marine institute will be working with the state to repair and restore the damage under a DLNR-issued special activity permit, which allows it to respond rapidly with DAR to coral damage incidents such as the grounding.
"In this case, they identified a few colonies of dislodged coral that will be re-attached as soon as ocean conditions improve," Sparks said. "We appreciate their response and expert coral restoration assistance in stabilizing and restoring this site."
Coral fragments collected this week will be grown out at the marine institute lab to be planted back at Honolua or in other areas where restoration efforts are underway, Sparks said.
A final report on the damage will be presented to the state Board of Land and Natural Resources, along with DAR's recommended fines and penalties for the damage.