This past summer there was a very unfortunate event that happened on Oahu. During the filling of a container ship with molasses, the company used a rarely used pipe that unfortunately had rusted very badly and had some holes. From about 7:00 in the evening to 6:00 the next morning, over 255,000 gallons of molasses was leaked into Honolulu harbor. Because of this, all of the fish and coral were killed. The molasses has a chemical in it which takes the Oxygen out of the water, forcing the fish to suffocate. On the day that this happened I was working on the submarines and when I returned to the harbor in the afternoon I couldn’t believe how black the water was! I thought that maybe there was a huge amount of mud that entered the harbor from the heavy rains the night before but I was soon stunned to see the surface of the water full of gasping, suffocating fish. For the next few days the smell was absolutely terrible! A company was hired to collect all of the dead fish but that didn’t help. After about 3 days all the fish were gone and all of the coral turned white.

The bad thing about molasses is that it does not dissipate and rise to the surface like in a gasoline or oil spill. It stays on the bottom and slowly gets washed out to sea. Fortunately, the molasses did not spread out of the harbor to Waikiki but it did spread to the next harbor which also killed all of the fish. Because of this there were some fishing businesses and other water sports businesses that went out of business. What is very sad is that the fish will not come back in my lifetime. It may take until the next generation if we are lucky. It is so sad to be in the submarine when going out or coming back into the harbor. Before the spill there were always lots of fish but now there is nothing. Another sad thing is that this could have been easily prevented if the company would have been more strict with their checking of their pipes.