Learning about a land foreclosure at Punaluʻu provided an instant wave of relief for Nohea Kaʻawa. 


The way she read it, a recent court decision means that prime coastal lands on the Big Island’s southeastern shore, ones that sustained her grandfather and ancestors before him, would be off the chopping block. A chance to start anew.


“We have been fighting development after development for generations,” Kaʻawa said.


Punaluʻu is a strip of black sand beach on the Big Island in the rural K...

A daughter of the Big Island’s Kailua-Kona region, Cindi Punihaole remembers when the ocean was teeming with life. 


“My father taught me how to throw a net,” recalled Punihaole, now 74. “The sea was our ice box.”


Punihaole left the Big Island for college on the mainland and did not move home again for 30 years, until her aging parents needed her.


What she found on her return shocked her. Far fewer fish. A degraded reef. Resorts, golf courses, overtourism and urbanization — all of it pou...