‘We don’t work alone’

Ever since Tara Owens was 5 years old, she’s known she wanted to work to protect and preserve beaches and shorelines.

“When I was 5, my parents took me to the beach on the East Coast and I fell in love. And from that moment, I said, ‘I’m going to be a marine scientist one day,’ and I never diverted from that path,” Owens said. “I’m just so privileged to have made a life out of working to understand and protect and conserve our coastlines based purely on my interests.”

Owens is now a coastal hazards/processes extension specialist with the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, as well as a liaison to the Maui County Planning Department shoreline team.

For the coastal geologist, “working here on Maui has been a special experience.”

One of her colleagues also developed a love for the shoreline early on — Wes Crile grew up in Florida around the ocean and quickly became fascinated with the sand dune environment and how resilient the ecosystem is.

“I just find it very rewarding to take a degraded piece of land or something that’s been neglected, or for whatever reason trashed in some way, and slowly bring it back to life,” said Crile, who is a coastal dune restoration specialist with Hawaii Sea Grant. “I’m lucky I get to do things that matter, and matter to me, especially, and work with really great people and that helps out with making Maui a little bit better.”

Founded in 1968, Sea Grant is

Tara Owens sits in the sandcovered pavilion at Baldwin Becah Park where an extensive dune restoration project is planned. Owens shares the People Who Made a Difference honor with Wes Crile. Together they work alongside government partners and passionate community members to help understand the growing problem of sea level rise and coastal erosion, and turn that knowledge into action along threatened shorelines. part of a national network of 33 programs “that promote better understanding, conservation and use of coastal resources,” according to the program website.

Together, Owens, Crile and a team of local, county and state partners work to protect Maui County’s coastal areas.

“Nothing we do, we being me, Wes and all of our Sea Grant team, is without a larger team behind us that backs us up,” Owens said. “We have willing partners at the county and the state, and all of our champions in the community. So nothing we do as an initiative is on our own and I don’t feel comfortable taking any credit.”

As an extension agent, Owens offers science-based project planning and permitting, researches, provides technical guidance and consultations, helps to develop policy, does site visits and conducts public outreach in response to coastal erosion and hazards.

“It’s amazing to work in a community that cares so much,” she said. “We don’t work alone. We cannot do this without the privilege of being able to participate with people in our government and in our community.”

It takes patience and persistence to fight against ongoing coastal issues like sea level rise, runoff, wave storms and erosion. That’s why building partnerships with local and federal agencies as well as community members is crucial for Sea Grant.

“Being in a place where we can see how a government operates and have a seat at the table and figure out where we can fit into the process and be helpful, that’s what we try to do,” Owens said.

In recent years, they have developed key tools that predict sea level rise and maps that forecast waves, especially for hard-hit areas in West Maui, and continue to work on long-term community plans and policies based on data.

With a background in natural resource management, watershed restoration and ecology, Crile’s role with the county is to lead dune restoration projects and programs at beach parks across the island. He also works to develop sciencebased best management practices for dune restoration and advises coastal land use planning and conservation efforts throughout the Pacific Region.

He usually goes to Owens, who tells him the coastal processes of a certain area, such as in which direction the currents are flowing, the wind is blowing and the sand is moving. With that information, Crile can formulate a sand dune restoration and management plan as seen at Lower Paia Bay Park on the North Shore or the Kamaole Beach Parks in Kihei, for example.

“But it’s really challenging because it’s not a one size fits all,” he said.

Dunes serve as a natural buffer to storms and wave run-up, like the Kona low rains and flooding that hit Maui earlier this month. Overall, “a healthy sand dune makes for healthy beaches,” he said.

Both agreed that the county is moving in the right direction toward mitigating coastal erosion and beach loss through “forward thinking,” Crile noted, like passing policies that prevent hardening the shoreline or building on the coastline, establishing conservation programs, having tough conversations about climate change and bringing in experts.

Still, there’s much more to do as projects take time, but in the midst of it all, “there’s a lot of hard work happening,” Owens said.

For more information about Sea Grant’s work or ways to donate or get involved, visit seagrant.soest. hawaii.edu.