Ualapue, HI

On Molokaʻi’s southeast coast, ʻUalapuʻe follows Kamehameha V Highway (Hawaiʻi Route 450) through a census-designated place and Hawaiian Home Land in Maui County. Its shoreline is marked by loko iʻa, the traditional Hawaiian fishponds that connect land, reef, food, and stewardship. The Hokukano–Ualapue Complex includes several of these ponds. ʻUalapuʻe Fishpond once covered 22 acres, with a coral-and-basalt seawall eight to nineteen feet wide; it remained in use until the 1960 tsunami damaged the wall and its two sluice gates. Nearby Keawanui Fishpond is older and larger, and restoration work there includes teaching Native Hawaiian culture and fishpond technology to schoolchildren.

The fishpond is also part of living memory. A University of Hawaiʻi oral-history project recorded thirteen East End residents discussing the ʻUalapuʻe Fishpond project, the cultural and historical role of fishponds, and everyday life on eastern Molokaʻi. State records list a maintenance permit for ʻUalapuʻe, keeping the pond within Hawaiʻi’s current restoration and stewardship work. That work continues on land as well as water. The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has convened beneficiary and community meetings for a ʻUalapuʻe Kuleana Subsistence Agriculture Homestead Settlement Plan. Ahonui’s stated goals include restoring native plants, strengthening farming, fishing, gathering, and land-management skills, and protecting cultural sites and customary practices in the Manaʻe community. ʻUalapuʻe’s local map therefore runs from Route 450 to the fishponds and from the shoreline to Hawaiian Home Lands, with food systems and cultural stewardship still visible in the same geography.