I was scuba diving at Makua (Tunnels Reef) in Kauai in 2010 shooting video of marine life and corals and enjoying a beautiful North Shore day. When I got done with my dive I came out of the water carrying my large yellow water housing for my camera and a tourist asked what I was shooting with the equipment. I explained that I am a marine biologist and I was doing a movie about Kauai marine life for our local schools.
The tourist asked me what kind of fish they saw when they were out snorkeling and based on their description I tried to identify what they were looking at. Over a period of several years this questioning by the tourist happened almost daily and I got tired of trying to guess what they saw while on their snorkel so I decided to make a movie about Hawaiian fish identification just so I would not have to answer so many questions! Two years later I came out with the first ever Hawaiian fish DVD called “The Worlds Guide to Hawaiian Reef Fish.” The DVD was very popular and now we are bringing this exciting marine life series to your cell phone!
Over the past 15 years I have done over 2,000 dives on every main Hawaiian Island except Kahoolawe trying to take pictures and video of every known marine life species that lives in a depth of one foot to 100 foot deep. After taking thousands of hours of video and over 250,000 pictures I have about 80 percent of our sea life documented. This project took me to remote locations from 125-foot-deep water cliffs off Niihau to night dives off the Kona Coast of the Big Island. I lost three underwater cameras and two boats in the process of shooting the video and suffered one broken hip, but I got the job done!
A few years back I helped start the nonprofit Reef Guardians with a few friends on Kauai and we decided to take my vast database of pictures and make a phone app so divers and snorkelers could identify Hawaiian marine life species right on the beach using their phone. This turned out to be a massive undertaking but after several years of hard work we came out with a new Hawaiian Sea Life app that is free on the Apple Store.
You can learn all about each species and also learn their Hawaiian name; plus in the future we will have video links to each species. Now people can get right out of the water and identify all the cool critters they just saw in our beautiful Hawaiian waters!
Having most of the Hawaiian marine life species cataloged in one nonprofit organization turned out to be a great tool for educating the younger generation here in Kauai so Reef Guardians started and currently runs an amazing Reef Camp for kids down at Anini Beach where the students learn all about our marine life firsthand plus many other aspects about the health of our marine environment.
Reef Guardians has now put together a massive, extremely professional, first-of-its-kind online Hawaiian marine life educational program called Ke Kula Online Sea School. Now the public can learn all about Hawaiian marine life and ocean education right from the comfort of their home with the whole family.
To download the Sea Life app and learn all about the Sea School go to the Reef Guardians web page at www.reefguardians.org and to watch my Hawaiian marine life movie go to my web page at www.underwater2web.com.
If we are going to protect and save our marine life and coral reefs here in Hawaii we must first understand how to identify each species that calls Hawaii home and learn about their life out on the coral reef. Having our children at a young age exposed to reef education will allow them to make good decisions about our marine life management in the future.
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Terry Lilley is a marine biologist living in Hanalei Kaua‘i and co-founder of Reef Guardians Hawaii, a nonprofit on a mission to provide education and resources to protect the coral reef. To donate to Reef Guardians Hawaii go to reefguardians.org
