For us as Hawaiians
the land, the mountains, the seas,
it’s truly spiritual.
Akua,
he gave us this.
It’s a gift from God.
The reef on Molokaʻi
is extremely unique.
I spent lots of time
in my childhood
fishing and diving on that reef.
And this is a really amazing place,
but it’s at risk right now.
It’s at risk of being lost.
Molokaʻi has been known historically
as a place of abundance,
and that’s what we’re working to restore.
The ultimate goal for this project
is to be able to build 3D models
of the sea floor and of the coral reef
and then
map those in a way
where you can keep track of that data
over time.
It’s giving us tools to show
people the impacts from mountain
to the ocean.
Aloha. My name is Kalaʻi Ellis.
I grew up in Honolulu on Oʻahu,
but my grandmother is actually
from the homestead here on Molokaʻi.
It's truly like no other place.
This is the last place of the old Hawaii
and we want to try to keep it this way.
Molokaʻi actually
has the largest
fringing reef in the whole United States.
For generations, residents
here have fought to protect the island
and their way of life.
But they know that Molokaʻi is changing
and that the reef is at risk.
When we were young,
this was all white sand.
We could walk
100 yards and fill up one bucket of crab.
You know, you can see the impact.
So what we’re seeing right now
on Molokaʻi is a big increase
of sediment runoff
being deposited right onto the reefs.
And when it gets into the reef,
the reef is too muddy to fish.
The fish die, the reef dies.
Coral reefs
are one of the most threatened
ecosystems in the world.
This is where
the vast majority
of the diversity exists.
These are the rainforests of the ocean.
The people who live there,
they know what's happening.
They see the changes
they've experienced them.
So they approached us
at BYU saying
can you help us integrate
some of the newest technologies
in ecological research to assess status
of the land and ocean?
ʻĀina Momona is a native Hawaiian
organization founded by activist
Walter Ritte.
As a young man,
Uncle Walter was taught
by my great grandmother,
one of the kupuna
or wise elders on the island.
That's really strong
family ties because his grandmother
was our teacher.
When BYU came
he was here to help us.
So it was like, “Yes, let's work together.
Let's do this.”
The whole idea was to map out
a watershed, to look at the reefs.
And I knew that this was my chance
to try to start making a difference.
Native Hawaiians are sustainability experts.
They understand that
Mauka, the mountain, and Makai, the ocean,
are connected.
They manage their land
in very careful and thoughtful
and sustainable ways.
So the Ahu Puaʻa system is it shows us how
to sustainably manage
the connection between land and water.
There's a lot we can learn.
Right now in science
they like to call it the “ridge to reef,”
looking at the whole system
from top to bottom.
The connection between land and water,
you feel it very strongly.
Especially when you're on an island,
you know, Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga
because, you know, that's our food resources.
What happens in the ocean is a byproduct
of what happens on land.
And what happens on land
is heavily influenced by the ways
that it's being managed.
So in our efforts to figure out
what we're going to do Mauka
in order to protect Makai,
we needed information.
What they asked us to do
is to survey in high precision
what was happening on the mountainside,
as well as where sediment
was being deposited in the reef.
So if we capture that moment,
the conditions of the reef,
we can come back in
like two or three years
and run the same model.
And then in that way,
we see what's going on in the reef.
It becomes the complex dual process
of being able to do
terrestrial surveys and marine surveys
using different technologies.
So we reached out to
the College of Engineering
to develop some new technologies
that were effectively aquatic drones.
So the vehicle we've built is able
to autonomously navigate
from waypoint to waypoint.
We're trying to implement a robot
to replace
what a human has issues
doing consistently.
We're able to follow a straight path,
it's able to correct
for the current, correct for the wind,
and we can track exactly where it's been.
And it has a RTK GPS
it has a
stereo camera and a water quality sensor.
The ultimate goal for this project
is to build 3D models of the sea floor
and of the coral reef
and be able to map
those in a way
where you can keep track of
that data over time.
So we finally
got it tested out in Hawaii.
We couldn't have asked for a better,
more perfect day
seeing the fish, seeing the dolphins.
Going out, putting the boat in the water,
seeing the autonomous rover
work its magic.
We came out on the perfect day,
so the water was super clear,
the wind was super low,
so our robot was able to function.
We were able to see lots of cool stuff
like the turtles
were very interested in our robots
and kept peeking at them.
Seeing the data,
seeing the pictures pop up.
We got tons and tons of data,
20,000 plus images of these reefs that
we can use for years to come.
And it's just amazing
that this autonomous rover
was able to create a 3D model
that we can revisit
without having to go out on a boat.
It just made this data,
all of this information
so much more accessible
to the broader public.
Ultimately,
the goal of this is to produce
a technology that will allow us to survey
much larger areas
and produce higher quality
information
for people
to make decisions on how to conserve.
We’re learning
how to rely on each other
in order to survive.
We’re looking for, how do we survive
on little dots of islands
in the middle of the vast
Pacific continent?
In the early going,
it's really important
to have people outside of us
to understand what is happening
and what we need to do.
Every level of understanding helps us
to better prepare to adapt to the changes
that we know are coming
and to form our strategies around that.
Everybody came together.
They came with drones
and they came with technology.
So we have a really
strong foundation that gives me,
you know, a lot of hope.
When people come to Molokaʻi,
they are inspired by the passion
and the motivation of individuals
and by the complexity of the problems
that exist in the world
that need
the tools that our students
are developing at BYU.
And that's the main reason
why I left my home country
to pursue education
because that's one of the key factors
that you can take home
and use it to protect the ocean.
It enables students to see
how the research we do
can can enable us to be able
to serve people
and also to integrate
with people and learn from them
as they learn from us.
It both sort of takes their learning
and inspires them to apply it,
and it takes the spirit
and it teaches them
how important they are
in providing solutions.