From the moment you step onto the lush grass growing alongside Alakoko Fishpond, it’s clear that you’ve arrived at a transformative wahi pana, a storied place celebrated in Hawai‘i’s cultural traditions. After welcoming guests to the fishpond, Fred “Peleke” Flores, Mālama Hulē‘ia’s Field Operations and Resource Manager of Alakoko Fishpond, cultivates the sense of working as one entity and not as many individuals by asking everyone to form a circle. “Leave whatever might be weighing you down at the front gate,” he instructs, referring to the stones intentionally stacked at the entrance. “It will be waiting for you to pick it up on your way out. Or leave it there and move on.”

Born in Hilo, Hawai‘i, and raised in Waimea, Kaua‘i, Flores attended Kapiolani Community College after graduating from Waimea High School in 2001. He then transferred to UH Manoa to pursue Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies, focusing on mālama ‘āina (caring for the land). This choice launched Flores into nearly twenty years of work for ‘āina-based non-profit organizations, including fishpond restoration.

“As we restore the fishponds, it can help us really understand how our kūpuna survived in the middle of the ocean, growing and gathering 100% of everything they needed. It can help us understand our environment and how we can protect it a little better,” says Flores.

Recognized nationally for his role in the preservation of Hawaiian fishponds, Flores is experienced in building traditional hale (homes), uhau humu pōhaku (Hawaiian dry stack masonry), and restoring Hawaiian food systems such as lo‘i kalo (taro), lo‘i pa’akai (salt beds) and loko i‘a (fishponds). For almost nine years, he served on O‘ahu as Kū Hou Kuapā Project Caretaker/Manager of Paepae O He‘eia. During that time, Flores applied his knowledge of dry stack wall-building and mālama ‘āina practices to restoring the 800-year-old He‘eia fishpond with the help of community members. In 2018, Flores brought his expertise back home to Kaua‘i to work at Alakoko Fishpond, Kaua‘i’s largest remaining Hawaiian fishpond. Today, Flores’s work is as much about education as it is about restoration, as he teaches students, community members and business groups about the role fishponds played in traditional Hawaiian food systems and their function today through hands-on experiences.

Mālama Hulē‘ia is a nonprofit organization committed to using traditional Hawaiian practices to restore a free-flowing, healthy, and productive Hulē‘ia ecosystem at Alakoko Fishpond and Hawaiian culture and values in the process. The 600-year-old fishpond is nestled in Kaua‘i’s Nāwiliwili and Hulē‘ia region, an area once fed by fresh water from streams flowing into Nāwiliwili Bay, including Hulē‘ia. In 1973, the once self-feeding Alakoko Fishpond was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its vulnerability to environmental degradation, accelerated by damage from storms and the invasion of red mangroves, led the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation to give it an alarming designation as one of Hawai‘i’s most endangered historic places in 2009.

For the past six years, Flores and Mālama Hulē‘ia have been working to revitalize the suffocating fishpond whose walls had been torn apart by mangrove roots. Along with removing invasive mangroves, they plant Hawaiian wetland vegetation like limu, which are used around the fishpond’s border. Recently, native plants have been re-establishing themselves around the pond, providing shelter, nesting and food for native water birds and fish. “The return of native birds is a sign of the abundance of food in the area. It’s a sign of a healthier ecosystem. And since the plants are used for food, medicine, shelter and traditional practices like making rope, we as people benefit,” Flores says.

Flores can be found throughout the year at Alakoko Fishpond, leading workdays and training in restoring ancient Hawaiian sites and sustainable practices. As a result, students and volunteers play a pivotal role in protecting all 102 acres of the historically significant site and perpetuating the cultural tradition.

Before launching into a community workday at Mālama Hulē‘ia, Flores has some instructions: “It’s important that we know who we represent.” Everyone in the circle, including Flores, shares their name, where they are from and who they are symbolically bringing with them into the fishpond. “It’s also important that we know where we are going. Know the place's name and what it is,” Flores insists. “In Hawai‘i, we have different kinds of fishponds, from wai (freshwater) and kai, which is salt, to waikai (a mix of fresh and saltwater). This includes kuapā such as Alakoko, a type of pond that is like a giant icebox functioning off waikai.”

With buckets in hand, volunteers wade into the fishpond, where they alternate between scooping mangrove propagules (floating juvenile trees) out by hand and skimming buckets across the pond’s calm surface where the feral plants collect. “We’re in the mud removing mangroves by hand, and it’s hot. I try my best to keep the students or volunteers motivated, creating that vision in their heads that they are doing something that's going to help the next generation. My hope is that they get why they’re doing it, even if it’s a few years later,” shares Flores, who successfully gathered together a monumental 2,000 volunteers to help rebuild the 2,700-foot wall of the Alakoko Fishpond in celebration of Mālama Hulē‘ia’s five-year anniversary in October of 2023.

“It’s our kuleana (responsibility) to educate, maintain, restore, repair, sustain and show the brilliant work of our ancestors and how we can carry it on in our lives today,” says Flores of what drives him. When he’s not organizing and leading workdays, Flores serves as Board President of Nā Pali Coast ‘Ohana, a non-profit dedicated to preserving the natural and cultural resources of the Nāpali Coast. He is also on the board for Iwikua, a non-profit that partners with Kuamo‘o Farms in Hanapēpē.

“There are diverse ways of farming going on at Kuamo‘o, with the māla‘ai garden, the aquaponics lo‘i lettuce, and the lo‘i kalo. I’ve been working on clearing the land for the lo‘i kalo,” says Flores of the irrigated terraces where lettuce and taro will grow. “And on Sundays, I bring my own kids down to Hanapēpē to check the beds of pa‘akai. They are learning to make clay beds and gather the salt.”

Flores’s tireless efforts as a community leader and love for the ‘aina have not gone unnoticed. In July, he was presented the Ellison S. Onizuka Memorial Award at the National Education Association’s Annual Human and Civil Rights Awards in Philadelphia after being nominated by the Hawai‘i State Teachers Association Kaua‘i Chapter. Named after the late astronaut and engineer from Hawai‘i, the Onizuka Award honors those who significantly impact the education, achievement and equal opportunity of Asians and Pacific Islanders.

“I truly believe that the importance of Hawaiian fishponds, along with the knowledge and resources that come from them, can be of great use to our communities within these modern times,” Flores says of the larger implications of a morning spent scooping invasive plants out of an ancient pond. “Fishpond restoration can contribute to the goals of sustainability and food self-sufficiency across Hawai‘i for generations to come.

When you stand shoulder to muddy shoulder, filling buckets with mangrove propagules and dumping them onto a growing pile of hope, you are the waikai. The fresh and saltwater, the past and the future, blending into one powerful, nourishing force for the sake of something bigger.

Learn more about Mālama Hulē‘ia and volunteering at monthly community workdays at malamahuleia.org.