Waiʻanae’s fishing tradition lives on through the local fishermen who continue to cast a line along its storied coast.

Much like other coastal communities throughout Hawaiʻi, Waiʻanae boasts a rich fishing tradition that stretches back to the time of the first Polynesian settlers. The name Waiʻanae—“waters of the mullet”—carries that memory: a time when the mullet were plentiful, gathering along this coast to mature before migrating to deeper waters to spawn and begin the cycle anew. In those years, Waiʻanae’s streams ran steadily to the sea, nurturing fishing grounds that were unmatched anywhere on O‘ahu.

Today, many who live in Waiʻanae still fish not for sport, but to feed their families and, when the catch is plentiful, the community as well. You often see them as you drive down Farrington Highway, silhouetted figures up and down the coast. They stake their spots along sandy dunes and craggy reefs, hoping to be blessed by Waiʻanae’s bountiful waters, just like the centuries of fishermen who came before. Here, the ways of nā lawai‘a (fishermen) live on: in the salt-stiff lines coiled at dusk, in the stories traded over buckets of ‘ōpelu and akule, in the meditative solitude of a line cast along the shore.

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