Kauai’s beaches are on the front lines of a growing marine debris crisis.
In 2024, Surfrider Foundation recorded the largest amount of trash ever picked up during beach cleanups across the country with more than 365,000 pounds. Of that, nearly half — 172,564 pounds — was collected in Hawaii, and over 162,000 pounds came from Kauai, Surfrider Kauai reported. That means Kauai alone collected more than the next leading state, Washington state, which logged 76,407 pounds.
Three of Surfrider’s top 10 heaviest cleanups in the nation took place on Kauai beaches:
• Kitchens Beach on Oct. 30: 3,715 pounds
• Mahaulepu Beach on Nov. 25: 3,600 pounds
• Anahola Net Cove on Dec. 18: 2,190 pounds
While Hawaii has long struggled with plastic pollution, Kauai’s cleanup data was only recently added to the national dataset, according to Surfrider’s Hawaii Regional Manager Hanna Lilley.
For years, Kauai’s records have shown persistent plastic pollution on beaches, particularly marine debris. The spike in 2024 reflects both this expanded data inclusion and an actual increase in debris, driven by ocean currents pushing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a vast, swirling mass of plastic and fishing gear — closer to the Hawaiian Islands.
Kauai’s position as the northernmost major island places it directly in the path of prevailing easterly tradewinds and westward-moving currents that funnel marine debris ashore.
“Kauai is often the first island to receive debris pushed westward from the Garbage Patch,” explained Cynthia Welti, longtime Kauai cleanup coordinator.
She noted that the east-shore beaches from Nukolii to Rock Quarry in Kilauea, plus popular sites like Lydgate and Kealia, bear the brunt of debris accumulation.
“The prevailing ocean winds correspond with the currents bringing debris from the North Pacific Garbage Patch,” Welti said. “Anytime there is a storm, we see a lot more debris washing in.”
More than 75% of the debris by weight on Kauai consists of derelict fishing gear — large net masses, buoys and heavy plastic crates.
These ghost nets are not local, Welti confirmed. Others have observed that some marine debris found on Kauai comes all the way from Japan, while debris originating locally in Hawaii is rarely found.
“The nets are large masses from Asia,” she said. “U.S. and Canadian fishermen tag their nets with Fish and Wildlife tags. We rarely receive nets with such tags on them.
Despite the huge scale of debris, Kauai’s cleanup efforts remain volunteer-driven.
“We have a wonderful core team of dedicated volunteers, as well as locals and visitors who come out to our events,” Welti said. School groups of kids make for enthusiastic workers. The main issue is people not knowing about the issue.”
Kauai’s challenges with cleanup logistics are significant: many debris hot spots are remote, accessible only by foot or boat, and the sheer volume can overwhelm volunteer capacity.
“We can get discouraged when we clean a beach such as Donkey and get reports a couple weeks later that it is full of debris,” she said.
Kauai’s fight against ocean trash has a long history.
The Net Patrol program began in 2006 with an Earth Day cleanup led by Barbara Wiedner, a Surfrider Kauai co-founder, and its goal is to quickly remove derelict fishing nets washing ashore before tides could sweep them back into the ocean, where they threaten marine life and coral reefs.
From 2007 to 2013, small groups of volunteers made targeted trips two to three times per month to remove nets. In 2013, volunteer Scott McCubbins committed to leading Net Patrols every Wednesday at 3:30 p.m., attracting both locals and visitors who want to help protect Kauai’s ocean.
In 2021, the Kauai chapter launched the North Pacific Hagfish/Eel Trap Project to address pollution from trap entrances used in East Asian and U.S. West Coast fisheries. Though Hawaii has no such fisheries, these traps frequently wash up on local shores and threaten marine life, including endangered monk seal pups.
In 2021 alone, Surfrider Hawaii chapters, community members, and cleanup groups documented and removed 6,400 trap entrances from Hawaii’s shores. Working with computer science students from the University of Hawaii at Hilo, they developed a model to categorize trap entrances by characteristics to trace their origins.
Since 2013, volunteers have removed an average of 85,500 pounds of debris per year from Kauai’s coastline, underscoring the relentless nature of the problem fueled by Hawaii’s oceanic location.
Across Hawaii, other islands also grapple with marine debris — though patterns and quantities differ.
Surfrider’s Maureen Brock reported that from January 2019 to mid-2025, the Maui chapter conducted 48 cleanups, removing nearly 79,600 pounds of debris with help from 2,326 volunteers.
She noted that plastics made up the majority of items collected — about half were plastic fragments — followed by cigarette butts, foam pieces, bottle caps, glass shards, and food wrappers.
Brock noted that they haven’t identified any major food or drink brands consistently showing up in the debris, and cigarette brands aren’t tracked. However, she said the team does monitor hagfish traps, which they find from time to time.
The heaviest Maui debris sites include harbors like Kahului and Maalaea, plus Sugar Beach and Westside shores near Lahaina, where debris spikes during Kona storms.
Maui has seen growing volunteer numbers, helped by social media, rising voluntourism, and partnerships with organizations like Malama Maui Nui and Pacific Whale Foundation. Yet, some sites have been dropped due to safety concerns involving homeless encampments.
On Oahu, according to Surfrider’s Ryan Dadds, the northeast beaches near Campbell National Wildlife Refuge and Kahuku Point see the most debris, driven by currents and their northern location. The most common items there are cigarette butts.
Dadds pointed out that tourism and urban development contribute to marine debris, explaining that increased visitor activity leads to more commercial runoff and pollution entering waterways — with the Ala Wai Canal serving as a prime example.
Despite many cleanup groups, Dadds said pollution continues to pile up. She also pointed to promising programs like Sustainable Coastlines, Parley for the Ocean, and Bottles 4 College, while noting that enforcement gaps in policies like Bill 40 — which restricts polystyrene and disposable plastics — have allowed some plastic items to resurge.
Jennifer Harrah, a representative of Surfrider’s national team, highlighted Hawaii’s disproportionate burden in ocean trash cleanup efforts. She noted that last year, Hawaii alone accounted for over 172,000 pounds of debris removed — nearly half of the total weight collected from beaches across the entire United States.
Harrah pointed to Kauai’s unique challenge with abandoned fishing gear, explaining that the island’s chapter runs a specialized program called Net Patrol, dedicated to swiftly removing nets that wash ashore before tides can carry them back into the ocean.
Emphasizing the broader scale of plastic pollution, Harrah shared that “83% of items collected during Surfrider beach cleanups were plastic — more than 700,000 individual pieces logged in our Beach Cleanup Database. Plastic pollution is a huge issue nationwide.”
Beyond cleanups, she stressed the necessity of systemic change.
“We know we can’t rely on beach cleanups alone to address plastic pollution,” Harrah said. “Surfrider is fighting back with policy solutions that tackle the problem at its source. We’re pushing for Extended Producer Responsibility legislation that forces manufacturers to pay for the cleanup costs of their own products. We’re also advancing plastic reduction laws like ‘Skip the Stuff,’ strengthening plastic bag bans, and passing balloon release prohibitions across the country.”
The debris is more than an eyesore. It poses grave risks to marine wildlife. According to the International Whaling Commission, an estimated 300,000 marine mammals die annually from entanglement in ghost fishing gear, with total deaths nearing one million when fish and turtles are included.
Kauai’s volunteers frequently find large net masses entangled on reefs or washed into tide pools — places critical to endangered species like Hawaiian monk seals and honu turtles. In 2023, a dead sperm whale washed ashore at Lydgate Park with nets and eel traps in its stomach; a monk seal also was found wounded from an eel trap shortly after.
Surfrider Kauai tallied 5,615 volunteers and 6,424 person-hours in 2024, including 444 local keiki participating in cleanup events.
Still, the amount of debris coming ashore sometimes outpaces removal capacity.
Volunteers “get overwhelmed or need a break, but more people step forward,” Welti said.
As Kauai and the rest of Hawaii face an ongoing onslaught of ocean plastic, Surfrider advocates say lasting change requires more than cleanup crews.
“We’re excited about adding Hawaii-specific data to the national dataset to bring attention to the issue,” Lilley said. “But this must be coupled with state, federal, and international cooperation to stop plastic pollution at the source.”
GARBAGE HAULS
Beaches with the largest single-day trash collections in 2024. Three of the top 10 dirtiest beaches were in Kauai:
1. Ocean Shores, Wash.
65,343 pounds (July 5)
2. Ormond Beach, Calif.
6,000 pounds (Sept. 21)
3. Kitchens Beach, Kauai
3,715 pounds (Oct. 30)
4. Mahaulepu Beach, Kauai
3,600 pounds (Nov. 25)
5. Damariscove Island, Maine (Bar Cove)
3,220 pounds (June 8)
6. Twin Harbors State Park, Wash.
3,153 pounds (July 5)
7. Little Damariscove Island, Maine
2,931 pounds (June 8)
8. Little Drisko Island, Maine
2,523 pounds (Aug. 24)
9. Adam’s St., Long Beach, Calif.
2,331 pounds (May 25)
10.Anahola Net Cove, Kauai
2,190 pounds (Dec. 18)
Source: The Garden Island
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