Kalepolepo Fishpond

Kalepolepo Fishpond is one of the few surviving ancient Hawaiian fishponds on Maui, a rectangular stone enclosure built between 1400 and 1500 CE for cultivating mullet and milkfish. The fishpond sits beside the main road in north Kihei and is often overlooked by visitors heading south, which is a shame — it is a direct, physical connection to the Hawaiian communities that fished this coast long before the condominiums arrived.

The local community organisation Hui o Nāpua has been restoring the fishpond since the 1990s. Volunteers regularly work on the stone walls; the organization sometimes holds educational events open to the public. The adjacent Captain Vancouver landing site marks the spot where European contact with this part of Maui began, adding another layer of historical context to a stretch of coast that looks very different from what those first visitors encountered.

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A story
Hawaiian fishponds like Kalepolepo were sophisticated aquaculture systems, not simple enclosures. The loko iʻa were built with sluice gates that allowed juvenile fish to swim in from the sea but were too small for the fish to exit when fully grown — a remarkably efficient form of fish farming that sustained Hawaiian communities for centuries before it was largely abandoned after Western contact disrupted the traditional land tenure system.

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