Friday, February 20, 2009

UH Sea Grant, NOAA helping

By building alliances and beating the drums for beach access, we've been able to enlist the support of ocean and coastal conservation experts at NOAA and the UH Sea Grant program. We believe we share many common goals -- so why not share information and resources?

For instance, NOAA has been working on a survey of public shoreline access for fishermen. But when they heard that was one of the things beach access advocates were looking for, NOAA contacted us about the study they were doing. You can download a pdf version of their presentation here:GIS%20access%20survey.pdf

Meanwhile, Dolan Eversole of the UH Seagrant program has been working with the DLNR to develop a comprehensive shoreline management for Kailua Beach. Although beach access was not initially a major part of that plan, he's now making efforts to see if grants can be applied to creating a web site for public beach access, modeled on what was done by the Maine Sea Grant program.

To see what kind of info they provide, you can click here or go to:
http://www.seagrant.umaine.edu/accesslaw/

This is precisely the kind of stuff we should have for Hawaii! Why is Maine ahead of us in this area, when we're surrounded by ocean and are famous for our beaches?

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