Pohoiki: A Local's Guide to the Big Island's Newest Black Sand Beach

Part I: The Two Faces of Pohoiki: A Personal Introduction

There are places on this island that live in your bones. For me, Pohoiki has always been one of them. Before 2018, Pohoiki wasn't just a spot on a map. It was a feeling, a rhythm. I can still feel the way my board would catch the face of the beautifully formed right at First Bay. A wave so friendly it felt like it was welcoming you home.

I can hear the rumble of diesel engines. The cheerful shouts of fishermen launching their boats from the ramp at dawn. Their shapes dark against the rising sun. Pohoiki was the piko, the center, for so much of our Puna community. A place for surfing, for fishing, for family gatherings where the smell of grilling food mixed with the salt spray.

We knew its moods, its currents, its breaks. We had names for them that were part of our language. The mellow rollers of First Bay. The hollower, more challenging Second Bay with its urchin-studded reef. The high-consequence barrels of Third Bay, a wave that demanded your full respect. Further down, you had the breaks we called Bowls and Shacks. Each with its own character, its own tribe of regulars. It was our second home, a place woven into the fabric of our lives.

Then Came the Summer of 2018

My first visit back to Isaac Hale Beach Park after it reopened in December of that year was a moment I will never forget. I drove the new, temporary road cut across the fresh, still-steaming lava fields. A stark black desert where a vibrant green world had been just months before. And when I stood where I had stood a thousand times before, I was looking at a view that was both familiar and utterly alien.

The bay, my bay, was gone. In its place was a vast, sweeping expanse of the blackest sand I had ever seen. A crescent of new earth that stretched from one end of the cove to the other. The boat ramp, the lifeline for our Puna fishermen, was completely landlocked. A concrete pier leading to a sea of sand instead of water. My surf breaks—First Bay, Second Bay, all of them—were gone, buried under tons of new land.

I remember hearing from others who felt the same deep sense of loss. One Puna native, Leila Kealoha, said she cried when she first saw it. But alongside the loss was an undeniable sense of awe. In our Hawaiian worldview, Pele, the goddess of volcanoes and fire, is a dual force. She is destruction, yes, but she is also creation. And here, before my eyes, was her powerful, undeniable act of creation.

This guide is my attempt to bridge those two worlds. The Pohoiki that was, and the Pohoiki that is. My goal is to provide you with the most detailed, authoritative, and up-to-date resource for this amazing new wonder of the Big Island. We will journey through the powerful science of its creation. Explore the practicalities of how to visit this transformed place safely and respectfully. And dive into the ongoing story of a community and a coastline that is still changing. Still being shaped by the forces of nature and the resilience of its people.