Imagine, if you will, being strapped into the back seat of a small, bumping helicopter, the cold wind of the early morning pressing hard against you through the opening where the door once was. Your eyes are locked into a pair of fourteen-pound FLIR binoculars scanning for white heat signatures in the shape of a deer, your shoulders burning as you struggle to act as a human gimbal. Nausea has set in and you know you won’t really get over the motion sickness until youʻve landed and processed all the data, ie watched back every minute of your bouncing video-recordings. |
|
When I try to explain to new team members how we used to do surveys, they just laugh and shake their heads. It’s pretty hard for them to imagine while they sit in a comfy chair, drinking a hot coffee, watching our new drone system hum along a pre-determined transect line. The most effort these young guns will put in is swapping out batteries.
These days, new thermal cameras mounted on state-of-the-art drone systems are now doing most of the work for us, capturing world-class data while processing it in real-time with the help of learning models. These new systems haven’t just replaced our old binoculars and early morning helicopter rides—they’ve completely transformed how we look at data and, more importantly, how often.
|
|
Data from a single survey is interesting, but multiple surveys of the same area—and what happens between them start to tell a story. How quickly do deer reestablish themselves? What corridors are they using to move between places? How have herd dynamics changed? Do we see increased plant biodiversity with decreased grazing pressure? At what point do deer densities result in sediment run-off? The list goes on.
Last week, we completed our first series of new surveys on Maui and are excited to continue them indefinitely. With each new piece of data, we’ll be able to better understand how our work is impacting the places we help care for and the extent to which we are moving closer to finding balance.
Our mission has always been to help find balance for Axis deer on Maui, and improved survey capacity feels like a big step forward. Mahalo nui for your continued support as a customer. Your impact on our mission is meaningful and something to celebrate.
|
|
A hui hou,
Jake Muise
CEO & Co-Founder
|
|
|
|
In every good story passed down by every people is instruction—manuals for mutual thriving, told again and again, in every tongue.
In Hawai‘i, the stories that have come down to us through the ages, stories we call ka‘ao, are dense with empirical place-knowledge and inexplicable wonders alike. Kaʻao are loaded with instruction, with the precepts by which we might live and thrive as people of islands.
|
|
One such story—a compact of wonders for Hawai‘i’s fishermen—is the kaʻao of Maui’s fantastic fisher-boy, ʻAiʻai. |
|
Said the people of old, it was ʻAiʻai, with the miraculous powers and teachings of his parents Kūʻula-kai and Hina-puku-iʻa, who fathomed and established the first fishing grounds in Hawaiʻi and who also imparted the importance of sharing oneʻs catch. |
|
|
|
Long ago, when the fishing grounds of Hawaiʻi lay unmeasured in depth and character and unmarked by bearings on shore, ʻAiʻai sailed around the easternmost cape of Maui in a wiliwili wood canoe. He had just erected the first stone shrines to call back all the fish who, along with his parents, had disappeared from Hāna.
Outside the rocky islet of ʻĀlau, he began his incredible work of setting up the first fishing stations or koʻa—quantifying their fathoms, their manner of fish, their clearings of coral ledges where no fishermenʻs hooks would catch; on shore, demarcating the aligning landmarks and erecting the fishing altars; in the sea, depositing, one by one, his many marvelous fish-drawing stones.
The kaʻao of ʻAiʻai first details the establishment of several of East Mauiʻs koʻa—from the mile-out fishing grounds of Koʻanui in the South to the koʻa at Waiohue in the North where he placed a fish stone that called in immense amounts of kala, or surgeonfish, for generations of people there. On and on the story goes, imparting valuable information of the quantities and kinds of fish (as well as the methods by which to fish them) to be found across East Maui.
|
|
After years of work establishing koʻa, ʻAiʻai was line-fishing from his canoe at Koʻanui one day just as he met another canoe drifting pass. The canoe was empty of any catch and belonged to a man named Kānemakua and, as it drew near, ʻAiʻai pulled a giant fish from the water and placed it into the fishermanʻs hull. ʻAiʻai then instructed Kānemakua to do the same for other fishermen he might meet and to do so without regret. Kānemakua returned to shore and prepared a feast of the giant fish for his family and neighbors without forgetting the words of the mysterious young fisherman, going on to observe them all the days of his life, erecting a fishing shrine near the sea where fish was shared, always.
By this practice, the fishing grounds of Koʻanui were made wondrously rich and it was said that the hooks of its generous anglers never returned to the shores of Maʻulili without a fish.
|
|
Like all good stories, the kaʻao left to us of ʻAiʻaiʻs ancient sail around Maui—all his measuring, his planning and then his directions for sharing—is valuable instruction for our own time. His story hints at one of the first steps to tending to a food resource, which is to take careful account. And then, from deep understandings of environmental health, comes the creation of robust systems of communal health. |
|
In our work with deer at Maui Nui, this is the ideal to which we strive—to continue to learn as much as we can about our places and this food source through the rigor of tradition and the expansion of new technologies, from understanding the influence of each moon phase to piloting new-fangled infrared drones. The keener our awareness of all of these systems, the clearer our re-imaginings of the role of deer on Maui, for sharing with community, for feeding customers, and for finding a better balance for our ecosystems.
The genius of the kaʻao of ʻAiʻai is embodied in his name alone. ‘Ai and ‘ai—to be fed, not just once, but again and again, by systems of shared health designed carefully, brilliantly, for both people and place.
|
|
Ola ku'u aloha,
Kuʻulani Muise
Brand Lady & Co-Founder
|
|
|
|
In Case
You Missed It
NEW TO OUR NEWSLETTER?
|
|
As this is already our 19th Volume of what has been described as the longest Newsletter ever, we have archived Volumes 1-18 for anyone who might love some backstories and extra long-form content. |
|
|
|
|
