The officer spouse group I am apart of took an adventure to Coconut Island which is a restricted access research island used by the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (all beaches in Hawaii are free to access by anyone, there’s a small beach you can use on Coconut Island pictured above but can’t go past that). It is also the island featured in the opening song of Giligan’s Island . It got its coconut trees when a Hawaiian Queen wanted to host a luau on it but didn’t think it was pretty enough, so she shipped a bunch of coconut trees over. We were told to always be situationally aware because falling coconuts kill more people than sharks do every year.
We were provided a guided tour of the island which took maybe 15 minutes to walk around. We learned about some of the projects like this pontoon turned vacuum boat which suctioned up invasive algae and was so successful it’s now retired.
We could see some of the research facilities
And touch sea life in their touch tank.
Our tour guide was a retired veteran who wanted to keep his mask on, which was fine, but it made it difficult to hear. We heard a lot about the history, and at times in a little scatter brained manner, and not much about the research. I was a little disappointed by the tour guide… but it was still a worthwhile adventure.
The last fun fact I really remember is that one of the prince’s who lived on the island kept all kinds of exciting animals like gorillas and elephants which eventually became the beginning of the Honolulu Zoo. The elephant, Empress, could’ve been the longest living captive elephant at her death in 1986.
P.S. It’s mango season in Hawaii if you couldn’t tell.
If given the opportunity, I might go again, but I won’t go out of my way.
The mountains were showing off that day.
