Fish Pond Cultural Project

Cultural significance of the Loko Kuapa

The cultural significance of my pond is that it is only unique in Hawai’i; you can not find the Loko Kuapa anywhere else in the world. This pond was used as a renewable food resource that produced fish. The Loko Kuapa was basically only built by the men, they moved all the rocks and done everything within the walls. The women couldn’t go within the wall or touch any part of the pond; their job was to pick the limu for the men to use for the construction of the pond. The harvesting could take place in two ways, in one way, two men would on the wall near the gate holding up a net, they would wait for the tides push towards the gate, then they would throw pieces of taro in the water to attract the fish to one spot, then they would throw the net over the fish to capture them. The other way to harvest them would be using the pa’i pa’i technique. Let’s say there are some big fish in the corner being stubborn about coming out, two men would stand with a net, and the third would beat the water to scare them out so the other two men could throw the net over the fish. Pa’i Pa’i means to beat.

Location: This pond is the only pond that would be all the way in the ocean, the rest of the ponds would be like half way in the ocean and half on land. This pond would be in the shore of the ocean.

Construction

My fish pond was constructed by a human chain starting from the mountain to the ocean. Up in the mountains, they would gather lava rock and move it to the ocean by the human chain. The rocks would be placed very strategically with bigger rocks forming the foundation of the pond. Smaller rocks and rubble were used to fill in the gaps in the wall and to make sure the rocks in the wall would stay in place. They would build the height of the Kuapa (wall) as high as the year’s highest tides to prevent fish from escaping the pond. The wall was designed to allow waster to permeate through the rocks and circulate in the fish pond. The Makaha or the gate would be the thing that would let the small fish in and it would keep the bigger fish trapped within the Loko Kuapa. It was built by bounding the wooden gate with cordage leaving a half inch gap between the wooden pieces.

Important characteristic: Makaha- it was a gate that was designed to let the smaller fish fit through it and make the bigger fish stuck in the pond. Every fish pond has one of these.

Supplies: Lava rock, coral, and coralline algae.

This is my visual aid of a loko kuapa I made from play dough.

This is the barracuda, one of the fish you can find in the Loko Kuapa. The Hawaiian name for this fish is the Kaku.

This is seaweed or limu, you can find this plant on the walls of the loko kuapa. This was used as a kind of cement of the wall.

This is the flag tail fish, its Hawaiian name is the Aholehole. This is one of the fish that the old Hawaiians use to collect from the loko Kuapa.

This is the Threadfish, in Hawaiian, it is called the Moi. These fish happen to be very small, they can grow up to be about 165 cm. This fish can also be found in the Loko Kuapa.

This fish is called the Jack fish. The Hawaiian name for this fish is the Papio. This fish can be about 10 pounds in weight.

This is my food web. It starts out from the seaweed, the seaweed gets it's energy from the sun in a process called photosynthesis, then the small fish comes and eats the seaweed, then the bigger fish eats the smaller fish and so on and so fourth. The top of this food chain would be the barracuda.

The Inter Tidal

The inter tidal is almost like a nursery for small fish. The fish stay in the tide pools and leave to be eaten by the bigger fish in the sea. This makes the inter tidal a big part of our aquatic food chain. From my studies, i have learned what the zones are and what kind of animals live in them. The zones are splash zone, upper intertidal, lower intertidal, subtidal, and tidepools. Some animals that i have personaly found out in the field were octopus, crabs, hermit crabs, fish, sea cucumber, urchins, star fish, and vana. The tide is very important to our tide pools because they affect our high tides and low tides. The tide is affected from a thing called centrifugal force, that is when the earth and the moon's gravitational pull, pulls in unison to make extreme tides. Spring tide is when the tide are super high in one place and super low in another place, this occurs when the earth, moon and sun are all lined up. Neap tides is when high tides are not so high and when low tides are weaker, in other words it weakens the tides, this occurs when the earth, sun and the moon is not in line.

My studies took place in the tidepools, this is where i collected my data. In my group we took recordings of three groups with a one meter by one meter square called a quadric. For each quadric, we counted the number of animals that were in them, we then took the salinity with a refractometer, then we found the temperature of the water in celcius with a digital thermometer. after we got all of our information, we would look for interesting fish to catch to show to the class. After we have recoreded our findings in our notebooks, we headed back to the van to drive back to school.

Out in the field, i would say the most interesting things we found would be the two octopi our class found. One octopus was still a little baby, and the other one was almost fully grown. My research concluded that if you would go into deeper water, you will most likly find more fish. The most abundent animal i recorded in my reseach would be the crabs, you can find a lot of crabs underneath the rocks if you move them slowly, but remember, you always have to leave it the way you found it. The quadric i found that had the most animals also had the coldest water of a temperature of 25.9C, the other temperatures were 29C and 28.4C. The salinity were the same for each test area. We compared the upper intertidal and the lower intertidal, and the lower intertidal was occupied with more sea critters.

Plankton Lab

Plankton is very important to all life on Earth. Plankton are the very bottom of the food chain as the primary consumer. Plankton get there energy through a process called photosynthesis, this is where they get there food from the sun. Energy is transferred from them by bigger fish eating the plankton, then bigger fish eating the fish that just ate the plankton and so on and so fourth. Without plankton, all life in the ocean would not exist.



To study plankton, we had to go out in the field and collect our own plankton. My class of about 25 all gotten into groups of 5 or less, then each team member would have a certain task he or she would have to accomplish. After we found out what we were going to do, we headed to the Kihei Boat Ramp in South Kihei to collect our plankton samples along with other data including the temperature, the salinity, and the turbidity. To collect the plankton, we used a special plankton net made from fine mesh, and then we would put the plankton into the water bottle. To get the turbidity we used the turbidity tube, how you use this tube is by looking through it with water in it, and if you can see the little disc in the bottom, the disc is called a Suki disc, then you measure how much water you have in the tube. To find the salinity, you use a little thing called a refactometer, what you do is you put a drop of water onto the blue part of the refractometer, then you look through the scope to see what the results from the graph gives you. We measured the temperature with a digital thermometer in Celsius, we recorded the temperature of the air and the water.



After we gathered all of our data at the Kihei Boat Ramp, we brought it back to the class room to find the number of plankton in our samples. To find the plankton, we needed to use a microscope to find all the plankton in our sample. While using the microscope, we had a cool program on the computer that allows to see what we see through the microscope on the computer screen. This program is called Proscope. With the help of the telescope, we were able to count our plankton samples in our pitri grids to record our findings in our notebook.



After i have completed my study of plankton, I have found out that plankton are usually more abundant in warmer water because plankton need sun light to live. I have also found from the research of plankton experts that you can find more species of plankton in warmer water rather than cooler water. The last thing i found was that, in our samples, the most abundant type of plankton was the copepod.