Wai Wai // The Value of Hawaiian Water

The Hawaiian word for water is Wai. It holds such value that the word for value, worth, or importance is Wai Wai. Water twice.

The native people of Hawai’i have a deep connection with water. Not only because they are located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but because the connection between the life cycle and the water cycle is more fragile on an island. The development of sustainable resource management through native intelligence is why Hawaiian culture has flourished.

A lot has changed in Hawai’i since outsiders came and impacted their way of life. The culture has been oppressed, the people have been brainwashed, the land has been abused, and the water has become polluted. This problem isn’t unique to Hawai’i. We all live with our own versions of this sad development in our different parts of the world. However, Hawaiian culture might hold a long overdue solution to the pollution problem: the Ahupua’a system.

The Ahupua’a system could be explained in a simple bumper sticker: We all live downstream. Yet this system holds people personally responsible for their part of the watershed they’re connected to. It’s about natural resource and human behavior management. 

The mountains where water first touches the islands is a place for sacred reverence and pure intentions. As the water flows down into the farmlands it needs to stay pure because it’s used to grow food like kalo and things used by people. Then as the water reaches the ocean, it still needs to maintain that purity because the runoff will impact all ocean life and the people who are sustained by it. The Ahupua’a system is such a solid example of native thinking and lifestyle choices that we can all learn from it as we decolonize our planet and learn to live more peacefully.

In this story series, we’ve asked Hawaiians who live in different parts of the modern Ahupua’a to share what they know about this interconnected system. Please read on and learn how to take better care of your personal watersheds.

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The full length film is posted above. Please enjoy and share.
All 6 episodes are posted to YouTube as well.

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Made in partnership with our friends at OluKai 

Complicated Relationship

A Stay Wild Interview With Commercial Fisherman & Photographer Corey Arnold

coreyfishes.com // @arni_coraldo

What is the state of fish in Alaska?

Curiously variable.

How is it different from when you first started commercial fishing there?

When I got my start commercial fishing in Bristol Bay back in 1995, the Kvichak River was on a downhill slide and sockeye salmon weren’t returning in huge numbers like they used to. The river was mostly shut down to commercial fishing for short of a decade. Some blamed overfishing, others blamed high seas international poaching, and others blamed natural cycles and ocean conditions unrelated to human activity. 

But the science didn’t add up for the overfishing case. As it turned out, catching more fish on their way to spawn seemed to produce healthier, more successful babies for the salmon that did make it to their spawning grounds. Lately, commercial fishermen harvest about 50-70% of all the salmon returning to Bristol Bay, and this year we had the largest return of salmon since records began in 1893. That said, in other parts of Alaska, this year several rivers like the famous Copper River saw a near collapse of sockeye salmon returning to their native spawning grounds and no one can say for sure what happened. Other fish stocks such as halibut, pollock, and crab go through huge boom and bust cycles naturally. 

Climate change is tripping me out though. Trees are growing large around our fish camp when it was once only frozen tundra. I remember digging an outhouse back in 1995, peeling back the tundra to find only frozen earth. I’d chip at it daily with a pickaxe and letting the sun thaw it inch by inch. This summer, we dug a new outhouse hole and were 10 feet deep in the warm ground in just a couple hours. There also seems to be an affect on run timing, this past summer the fish showed up 2-3 weeks later then ever before. We are entering an era of unpredictability and for the fish, only time will tell. 

What thoughts flow through your mind when you step onto a fishing vessel now?

I think about what the tide is doing, how fast it is, what stage it’s at, and how high it will it go. I think about how the fish are swimming with the current during the flood tide and against the current in the ebb tide. Fish stack up on the ebb, and they push through hard on the flood. I think about the placement of my nets and how long it will take to pull the fish in before the tide empties out. I wonder if I have too much net out or too little. I wonder if the beluga whales are here because there are a lot of fish offshore. I think of a lot of things that have nothing to do with computers and email and iPhones. I feel connected to the living systems on Earth and I think of how lucky I am to experience this. 

How did you find a way to combine your love of fishing and photography?

I was doing both for many years and never really thought about combining the two. For my first five summers of commercial fishing, I was just fishing, and have few photos to prove it. I was going to art school in San Francisco around that same time making conceptual “art school” kinda work like black and white abandoned buildings, friends naked, homeless people, dolls…things that people do when in art school. 

But after many years of fishing and coming back with dramatic stories of nearly sinking, bear encounters, and screamer captains—stories that were so different than what my friends back home could relate to—I started to think about turning my fishing work into a long-term photo project, maybe even a lifelong project. 

I wanted to document the world of commercial fishing in a not-so-typically documentary sort of way by being more playful, more abstract at times, and  focused on the experience of what it feels like to be at sea or in a remote fish camp rather than the more literal act of fishing. So in 2002, I found a job on a small cod jigging boat in the Bering Sea for two months, and that’s when I spooned my first cod.  

What are some of the most profound moments you’ve caught photos of?

Lately I’ve been photographing the sea but with some sort of interruption of fishing gear slicing through the frame. I spent some time on pollock trawlers in the Bering Sea and was floored by the complexity and massive scale of the gear being used. There was a such a dramatic battle of force between the waves and dozens of strands of colored lines tearing through the water as the net came to the surface, then a half a million pounds of fish would burst to the surface in a giant log snaking into the horizon.  

Another favorite is a portrait I made of my friend Ben giggling and hugging a big bloody king salmon at Graveyard Point some years ago. There is an incredible amount of blood pouring out of the fish. But for me, it says something about our complicated relationship with the fish we love and kill for a living.

What would be a dream story assignment for you?

I’ve always wanted to spend time in the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Russia, photographing the far reaches of commercial fishing in the high North. I’m really interested in seeing for myself the state of fish in these underreported regions. 

How’s life going in the abandoned cannery you live in called Graveyard Point?

Graveyard Point is a very special experimental temporary community of salmon fishermen that pops up every summer in Bristol Bay. It was abandoned as a fish factory in the 50s and since was taken over by the setnetters that have fishing sites nearby. It’s a melting pot of characters from all walks of American life who take shelter in the rusted and rotting carcass of the old cannery buildings.  

There are about 60 permit holders with small aluminum boats and their crews who sleep at Graveyard, and deliver their catch to “tenders” or fish buyers who anchor in large boats nearby. Graveyard is a dirty place with a lot of unshowered, sleepless fishermen wandering the old wooden pathways, trying to avoid huge brown bears and keeping their skiffs afloat during storms and 25-foot tide changes. Cell phones don’t work very well at Graveyard and there are probably at least eight million mosquitos that also live there. It’s a work paradise. 

You’ve been fishing since you were a little kid, are there any lessons you learned that have help shape the man you are today? Or in other words, what have the fish taught you?

I’ve learned to be a responsible human, to care about quality and sustainability and renewable systems. I’ve learned that the experience of life at sea is a privilege. I have more empathy for taking the lives of fish. I’m thankful for their sacrifice. I’ve also learned the value of suffering and how it makes life on shore that much more rewarding in the offseason. The fish have taught me patience and sacrifice. They nourish my soul. 

Lucid Dreaming

Night Surfing in Waikiki

Photos by John Hook // @john_hook

Words by Justin “Scrappers” Morrison // @scrappers

Rider // Shiloh Tennberg

I’m not naked, 

but paddling in the dark 

sure feels that way. 

The water seems to go into my skin 

deeper than my freckles, tattoos, and hair. 

It’s cold in a good way like sheets 

when you first slide into bed or 

flip the pillow in the middle of the night. 

Feels like dreaming. 

I can’t see where I am. 

This is a place I’ve been, 

but it doesn’t look right. 

It moves the same way, 

the old up-down-up-down 

of passing waves, 

but I can’t see them. 

I’m here floating in a place I can’t see. 

I’m awake and dreaming.

I’m paddling in the dark into outer space. Above and below are the same blackness with dancing light streaks. 

Rider // Alyssa Wooten

The light does a hippy amoeba dance, waving its arms and legs around like a mellow castaway casually waving for a passing ship. We are passing ships in the night. 

It’s a trippy light that lives in night water. The light of Waikiki plays like a movie and the waves are the screen. 

We are the audience and the actors. 

This is an action movie full of bromance and artful wonder. We are twinkling from the light of stars and parking cars. 

We are reflecting off the black water surface. 

All the lights around blur into long streaks as the water swells up into a wall and curls over on itself. This is where we want to be. Right in the center of that curl of streaking light and black water. 

This is the dream we are lucidly living.

Rider // John Hook // Photo // Samantha Hook

The locals I’m with ride with pure grace on these waves of blackness and streaking light. Not me though. I stub my toe with every step. My take-offs are too early or too late. I close my eyes to feel the movement of the wave better since I can’t see things right. I catch a wave. Time moves slower and faster all at the same time. 

Night surfing ain’t easy, but my friends sure make it look that way.

Sharks hunt at night. This is a fact. This is the only fact I can remember about sharks. I need to stop thinking about sharks. If I get bit I won’t pull away or put up a fight. I will climb into its mouth, passing over its razor sharp teeth, curl up on its wet tongue, and go to sleep forever. I’m ready to die. I’ve taken my mental inventory of accomplishments and am cool with what I’ve got so far. My survivors will say “At least it wasn’t cancer or a car crash.” If I or someone else out in the water tonight gets pulled under we will disappear into the blackness. We are out here risking it all together. We are a suicide squad. I feel horrible about being here and deeply grateful for the people I’m here with. I lose my sense of self and am one shadow of many humans floating on the water surface with certain death below.

Then a shark brushes up against my foot and I’m done dreaming. This is a nightmare! I’m paddling faster than waves I should be trying to catch. I’m paddling off the front of the board. I’m paddling out of the water. I’m Scooby Doo and Shaggy’s love child of pure screaming fear cartoonishly panic-paddling for my life then the reality sets in. It was just the leash. Yeah. the leash, or seaweed, or some tourist’s lost goggles, or the Universe gently waking me up from this living dream. 

Joillydaze Gift Guide // Week 3

It's the Jollydaze again and we're here to help with the Gift Giving. Here are a couple ideas of goods we think are good to give. We'll have more gift ideas every week in December, so keep checking in.

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Sierra Designs // SierraDesigns.com

Actual gold is growing underfoot. Veins of gold blood secretly shine inside the mountains. Eureka! Golden state hikers delight, for this backpack is made in California.

RUNYON SPORTS PACK // $119.95

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Keep Wild Co. // keepwildco.com

If you eat fish, you should respect fish enough to know how to catch and clean them.

Kimi Fish Scaler // $20

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Solar-Powered Bike-Car // organictransit.com

I’m trying to rethink the adventuremobile. The opportunity for adventure is within every daily task when I try to avoid making fossil-fuel pollution. Taking my son to school, picking up a pizza, delivering magazines, or sneaking in a lunch break hike can all be pedal+solar-powered.
ELF 2FR // $9,000

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Almond Surfboards // almondsurfboards.com

Dear Foamie, we’ve had a lot of fun ... but this relationship usually ends at the landfill. I thought you were all the same pieces of fun crap that I don’t need in my life, but then Almond made a beautiful one that they promise to recycle. Let’s fall in love again.

R-Series // $359

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Seea Surf Suit // theseea.com

People who like this suit have been known to mix Pop Rocks candy and soda pop in their open mouth to entertain friends. Made with
recycled poly/spandex fabric in sunny California.

Hermosa One Piece // $135

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Stay Wild Magazine // Shop

This bottle hold 27 ounces of whatever you want. We've tested it with water, booze, kombucha, tea, coffee, fruit juice, veggie juice, rattle snake blood (just kidding) and have found that 27 oz is the perfect amount. The bottle is a collaboration with our buddies at Mizu. They make awesome stuff, so you can trust this thing will last for years of adventuring!

Adventure Bottle // $15

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Indosole // indosole.com

My new whip is made from old road trip-mobile tires upcycled into the soles of these sustainably made flip floppin’ slippahs. 

ESSNTLS Flip Flop // $35

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Mouyobi // mokuyobi.com

Wildflowers will shift their gaze from the sun to you. Rainbows will turn upside down to smile at you. Birds will land on your shoulder and sing into your ear a song about borrowing your shirt.

Noodle Doodle Tee // $35

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Arbor // arborcollective.com

You find yourself skating down the middle of the street. No cars around. The only sound is wind in your ears. Close your eyes. Shwooooooo … Feels good. 

Foundation Chamois Shirt // $79