This week, The Conversation looked at various aspects of the rebuilding of Lahaina Harbor. Now we hear from scientists who are concerned about the marine environment because of the nearly 100 ships that have been burned and the potentially dangerous runoff from the destroyed neighborhoods.

The August 2023 fire burned most of the fuel in the boats as they emerged from the water, and it then burned down to the waterline before sinking, said Russell Sparks, a biologist with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Water Resources.

The US Coast Guard has now recovered all sunken ships.

Sparks said there would have been a major fuel spill in coastal waters if the boats had sunk normally, but he is still looking for long-term effects from contaminants such as fiberglass, paints and metals.

At first, no one knew what to expect, but after the water and sediment tests were completed, concerns subsided somewhat.

“The contaminant levels were nowhere near as high as I feared,” said Renee Takesue, a U.S. Geological Survey geochemist based in Santa Cruz. “Someone suggested that the reason is that the fire was so hot and intense that many contaminants burned completely and that’s why we don’t see them in the environment as we initially feared.”

Takesue and Sparks have been working together for a long time, and after the fire they took action to collect data and better understand what impact the hazardous substances might have on the marine environment.

“I guess the samples that have been analyzed so far and even the ash and some of the research that’s been done on land suggest that a lot of the concerns, a level of contamination that we’re concerned about, may not be an issue after all. So that’s definitely good, but we still need to do some analysis on some of the early samples to really understand what all was released into the marine environment, so we’ll probably revisit that later,” Sparks told HPR.

If long-term negative impacts occur, he said, the health and resilience of coral reefs would slowly deteriorate and there could be increased rates of disease or coral bleaching compared to other reefs that are not affected.

“Hopefully it won’t have any long-term negative effects, you know, we’re all crossing our fingers for that, but it at least helps us to know what influences it’s been exposed to so we can start to think a little bit more about what we should be looking for.”

In June, the state Department of Health also began publishing its environmental monitoring data on a new website.

This interview was broadcast on The conversation on August 7, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Sophia McCullough adapted this story for the Internet.