On a bright July afternoon, as the birdsong swelled and the tide started coming in, I drove down a dirt road in my grandfather’s old silver SUV. The road led me through a farm gate, past a sign that warned ‘KAPU’ – restricted – in bright red, down a steep incline, along a grove of papaya trees, past a small green shed, and eventually, to Moliʻi Pond.

Moliʻi Pond is a 128-acre fishpond in the northern fold of Kāneʻohe Bay, on Oʻahu in Hawaii. Its water is translucent green. Its shoreline is muddy and viscous. Mangroves grow along the fishpond perimeter, and their pneumatophores drive ripples in the pond’s surface. A thin scum of yellowish algae floats on the southern side of the pond. Stout palm trees and elongated coconut trees rustle, and the sweeping canopies of hau trees print a kaleidoscope of shadows on the ground. The Koʻolau mountain range hugs the pond. Its ridges dip and swell. The mountains directly behind the pond are jagged and severe. The mountains in the distance slope gently.

I had come to this pond many times before. My father grew up on Oʻahu, and he lived on the same block as phycologist and aquaculturist Vernon Sato. In 2006, the Oceanic Institute asked Sato to write a book about Moliʻi Pond. He titled it The Keeper of Moliʻi Pond, and it recounts the life and work of the former fishpond caretaker, George Uyemura. In the years since his book’s publication, Sato has returned to the pond often, and, when my family was in town for the summers, he’d bring us along. We’d fish and talk. To me, Vernon Sato is Uncle Vernon, and the trips we took to Moliʻi Pond were formative and enchanting.

When the pandemic struck, Yale sent its students home. I returned to the heavy rains and oak trees in New Orleans. I took a gap year to work on and write about marine conservation. I became obsessed with fishponds. During the summer months of 2021, I rented an apartment in Kailua, the small beach town where my grandparents live. I embarked on a project to learn about fishponds and the communities that work around them.

Fishponds are an ingenious form of aquaculture engineered by the ancient Hawaiians. More than 900 years ago, as their population was growing into the hundreds of thousands, the Hawaiians realised that they needed to have fish available in case of a poor catch or a surprise visit from royalty. They noticed that fish came to the estuarine waters where freshwater streams flowed into the ocean. The Hawaiians fenced in these areas with lava rock walls, called kuapā. They built sluice gates, called mākāhā, that allowed small baby fish to swim into the ponds from the ocean. The fish grew so fat within the pond – on chain diatoms and seaweeds that flourished in the nutrient-rich brackish shallows – that they couldn’t fit through the mākāhā to swim back out to the ocean. This way, the Hawaiians could always catch fish from their ponds.

Fishponds were operated by fishpond caretakers, or kiaʻi loko. They understood the pond’s cycles and needs, and they understood how the ponds changed with the tides and the seasons. They learned successionally, through apprenticeship. To care for a fishpond was an art, and it took years to master. This art was lost when the West colonised the islands. The fishponds languished. Then, invasive species and overpopulation disrupted the processes that powered the fishpond system. Many fishponds were filled in and developed into neighbourhoods.

In the latter half of the 20th century, encouraged by the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance, community groups started organising to restore the fishponds. They wanted to grow fish again.

I have great respect for these ponds and the people who steward them. Fishponds, in their recovery, are symbols of hope and reclamation. I believe that they are an opportunity for food sovereignty and economic self-sufficiency. They are a potential means to combat climate change, invasive species, and resource scarcity. And fishponds are a beloved and communal space. Through my summer project, I planned to learn the histories of the fishponds, to explore the current work being done at them, and to meet the people who are behind their revival. I hoped to hear their stories, learn what the fishponds meant to them, and, in sharing their stories with a wider audience, celebrate and uplift their work.

Earlier in the summer, driving Uncle Vernon’s Toyota Tacoma, I had visited Moliʻi Pond to document and interview. But this time, my parents and younger brother were in town, and we were at the pond to have fun and talk story. We got out of the SUV and retrieved our snacks – poke, chips, and beer – out of the trunk.

At this corner of Moliʻi Pond there was a pier, and two boats floated in the water. Sitting atop a large concrete foundation slab, there was a faded shipping container that had been converted to an office area: windows and doors cut out, air conditioning, and electricity. Extending from the shipping container was a large wooden awning, painted green. It faced the pond. The awning protected a couple wooden tables, some chairs, a whiteboard outlining pond tasks, and three gurgling plastic blue tanks. Hoses hung from hooks hammered into wooden support beams, and, at the edge of the awning, there was a tall wooden table, covered in mesh, for washing oysters.

From this place, called the depuration facility, emerged Kuʻuipo McCarty. Her skin is sun-loved, and her wispy brown hair was tugged into a little bun. She is in charge of aquaculture at Moliʻi Pond, which is owned by the nature reserve Kualoa Ranch. I call her Aunty Kui.