Aquariums:
The Dark Hobby
Cast
Kimokeo Kapahulehua
Kimokeo Kapahulehua is one of Hawai'i's wisdom keepers who is a Kapuna elder with enormous knowledge of the land and its people. He was named the the 2004 Volunteer of the Year by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation for his dedication in helping to preserve, protect and promote the Hawai'ian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
Founded in September 2015, Kimokeo Foundation was created by Native Hawai'ian, Kimokeo Kapahulehua, to create a lasting legacy that would preserve and perpetuate the Hawai'ian culture with today’s and future generations. The Foundation is centered around Kimokeo’s love for the people and culture of Hawai'i and the land and sea that surrounds his island home, Maui.
Kimokeo Kapahulehua has been known for his tireless efforts to preserve Hawai'ian culture, land and sea. For decades, he has served Maui’s communities and protected its land and forests. From Hawai'ian outrigger canoe paddling and voyaging, to revitalizing an ancient Hawai'ian fishpond to educating thousands of youth about Hawai'ian culture, to supporting cancer survivors, he has touched people’s hearts urging them to take the aloha they receive from him to share with others. After decades of volunteering for many organizations, Kimokeo decided to consolidate his passions into the Kimokeo Foundation, with a legacy of giving.
Robert Wintner
Robert Wintner is Snorkel Bob, Hawai'i’s largest reef outfitter. His five marine volumes show reef society and personalities, narrating conservation victories and politics. As Executive Director of the Snorkel Bob Foundation, he is dedicated to reef recovery and the global campaign to ban the aquarium trade; “It’s all one reef.”
Wintner’s twenty books include fiction and memoir, well reviewed, optioned for film rights and recognized for excellence. Reef photography rounds out the opus with five volumes on reef culture and characters of Palau, Hawai'i, the Great Reef, the Virgins, Fiji, Tahiti and Cuba. Wintner’s reef photography book, REEF LIBRE, An In-Depth Look at Cuban Reefs & The Last, Best Reefs in the World and REEF LIBRE, the Movie, capture this pivotal time, from the streets to the reefs. Dragon Walk (Skyhorse Publishing, NY, 2018) and Dragon Walk, The Movie, link reef health and politics in Indonesia, the Philippines and Hawai'i.
The sum of these parts comprises a reef conservationist with a gifted eye for composition, focus and insight. Wintner is heard across the Hawai'ian Islands and around the world.
His short fiction has appeared in Hawai'i Review (University of Hawai'i) and Sports Illustrated. His historical novel, In a Sweet Magnolia Time was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a PEN/Faulkner Award. Los Angeles production companies optioned his sailing novel Whirlaway and the motorcycle adventure The Modern Outlaws for film rights.
Wintner lives on Maui with Anita, Cookie and Larry. His writing draws on real time experience, combining decades on the high seas and below the surface with a literary style honed to efficiency. Wintner’s latest novels are A California Closing, Where market value looks moxie in the eye, and all parties sign off, and Reefdog, an adventure romance of Hawai'i and Polynesia with fishy values. Robert Wintner is Executive Director of the Snorkel Bob Foundation and active in Hawai'i's conservation community, working diligently to protect Hawai'i's reefs.
Wilfred Kaupiko
Willy Kaupiko is the Mayor of Milolilii, the last fishing village on the Big Island of Hawai'i.
Growing up in Miloliʻi, Willy attended high school at Lahainaluna in the boarding program. After high school he served the United States for four years in Vietnam, and is a Veteran. He lived on Oahu and was a beach boy and life guard, he also paddled for the Waikiki Beach Boys. He later returned to Miloliʻi to help his parents with their business and raise his own family. Uncle Willy as many of the locals refer to him as is an avid ocean activist. Willy owns a refuse removal service and also hauls potable water.
He is an active member of the Hau’oli Kamana’o Church in Miloliʻi, and Willy continues to advocate for environmental and animal conservation causes that protect the precious natural resources of MiloliʻI village, especially his beloved ocean. He strongly believes that it is your kuleana to malama your place and to be grateful for all that you have been blessed with. As the Mayor of Milol’i, Willy always makes the effort to protect just causes and fights for what is right.
Kaimi Kaupiko is from the last Hawai'ian fishing village of Miloliʻi, where he works with youth teaching and leading educational programs for years. Kaimi keenly believes that these programs foster an environment that motivates and educates the future generations of children in Miloliʻi, and he seeks to provide educational opportunities for them. Kaimi believes that through correct access to quality education, the future generations of youngsters in Miloliʻi will prosper.
Miloliʻi is a vibrant thriving Hawai'ian fishing village with a healthy environment of rich marine resources and families with a strong identity, and pride in Hawai'ian culture. Kaimi works to provide Fishing Family Camps in which community families celebrate and practice traditional Hawai'ian fishing culture and marine resource stewardship. He and others established a Community-based Subsistence Fishing Area (CBSFA) in Miloli’i to improve sustainable management of marine resources including the traditional opelu fishing project, and marine monitoring.
Gail Grabowsky, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Director of the Environmental Studies program at Chaminade University in Honolulu. Gail has served as a member of the State Environmental Council and the Northwestern Hawai'ian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve Council. She has also been the associate director of the Pacific Symposium for Science and Sustainability. Gail has won several awards for teaching, research, community service, swimming, and outrigger canoe racing.
Her interests include developmental and evolutionary biology; invertebrate zoology, ecology, biomechanics and environmental science.
On Earth Day April 2007, Dr. Gail’s book “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save Hawai’i” was published and released.
Ben Williamson
When he was seven, Ben Williamson made headlines as the winner of a catchphrase contest held by a local McDonald’s—the same fast-food chain that he would crusade against as an adult in PETA’s McCruelty campaign, which sparked hundreds of protests at McDonald’s restaurants.
As PETA’s senior international media director, Williamson works with major media outlets to launch PETA’s groundbreaking casework, including FOX News, the BBC, and The Washington Post.
Williamson’s op-eds have appeared in The Independent, the International Business Times, Newsweek, and USA Today, and he’s been interviewed by countless national and international English-language broadcasters, such as Al-Jazeera, the BBC, and CNN. Before joining PETA in 2011, the London native studied at the London School of Economics, where he re-established the university’s Vegetarian and Vegan Society. Ben is currently Programs Director at World Animal Protection USA.
Jessica Wooley
House of Representatives
Jessica Wooley earned her law degree from University California, Berkeley. Practicing law in Hawai'i, she began her commitment to public service as an attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Hawai'i under the AmeriCorps program. She created Access to Justice programs throughout the state making legal services more accessible to people in need.
In 2000, Jessica became Deputy Attorney General, representing the Clean Water, Drinking Water, and Wastewater Branches for the Department of Health. She focused on law enforcement, and prosecuted the state’s biggest environmental administrative enforcement cases. She also served as a member of the advisory group for the Northwest Hawai'ian Islands (Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument) where she sits as a Conservation member. In 2008, Jessica became a Hawai'i State House Representative, and served three terms. Governor Abercrombie asked Jessica to be Director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control (OEQC), where she served until the end of 2015. She is currently running again for the House of Representatives.
Jonathan Balcombe
Jonathan is an ethologist and author of the New York Times best-selling book What a Fish Knows. His other books include Second Nature, Pleasurable Kingdom, and The Exultant Ark. In addition to authoring books, he teaches a course in animal sentience for the Viridis Graduate Institute, and performs consulting and editing services for The Editorial Department, and for private clients. He lectures internationally on animal behavior and the human-animal relationship. Jonathan is the former Director of Animal Sentience with the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy, and Department Chair for Animal Studies with Humane Society University, in Washington, DC. He has also served as Associate Editor of the journal Animal Sentience.
Jonathan was born in England, and has spent most of his adult life living in the United States and Canada. He has three biology degrees, including a PhD in ethology (the study of animal behavior) from the University of Tennessee, where he studied communication in bats. He has published over 60 scientific papers and book chapters on animal behavior and animal protection. He has worked for The Humane Society of the United States, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Jonathan’s sixth book, on the lives of flies and the human-insect relationship will be released in 2020 by Penguin Books. In his spare time Jonathan enjoys biking, baking, birding, Bach, and trying to understand the squirrels on his deck.
Teresa Telecky
Teresa Telecky, Ph.D. is Vice President of the Wildlife Department for Humane Society International. She is an expert on the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and serves as the Executive Director and Vice President of the Species Survival Network, an international coalition of non-governmental environmental organizations committed to the promotion, enhancement and strict enforcement of CITES.
Telecky has authored or co-authored several published scientific papers on animal behavior and endocrinology, as well as numerous and technical reports of The HSI. Following a post-doctoral fellowship with the National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki Japan, Telecky specializes in the international wildlife trade.
Teresa Telecky wrote the Wild Bird Conservation Act that stopped wild bird trafficking for the pet trade.
Kealoha Pisciotta
Kealoha Pisciotta is the President of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou and is the spokesperson for the Mauna Kea Hui, the people and organizations who have been actively protecting Mauna Kea, the mountain volcano on Hawai'i, the Big Island, one of the most sacred sites in Native Hawai'ian culture now threatened by the construction of a Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).
Kealoha founded the marine protection group Kai Palaoa in Hawai'i, and promotes the principles of Aloha Aina and Kapu Aloha to protect, conserve, and restore the abundance of the land and the ocean life through policy.
Keith Christie
Keith Christie shot footage around the world for The Dark Hobby. This reach is 70 miles south of the Cuban coast in the Gulf of Ana Maria. He went 130’ off the ledge in St. Croix, into downwelling with raging current on either side of Batu Balong, Indonesia, swept a mile out at The Blue Corner, Palau, into the night depths of Dumaguete, the Philippines, swept again in the Somo Somo Straits of Taveuni, Fiji and of course dove a few thousand times in Hawaii. He is known to capture the moment underwater, as The Dark Hobby shows.
Taylor Nicole Dean
Taylor Nicole Dean is a YouTube star and influencer, and was recently featured on VICE Documentaries. She has been called the Queen of the genre known as “PetTube.” Taylor is known for her love of animals and is an avid pet advocate boasting over two million followers. One of Taylor’s interests are fish, she is known for sharing her experiences keeping saltwater fish and has informed on the hazards it poses to reef wildlife.
Paul Cox
Underwater photographer Paul Cox is dedicated to preserving the great wonders beneath the ocean's surface. His work with Kary Jones-Cox features exquisite vistas of ocean reef wildlife. They focus on the South Kona Coast in Hawai'i and beyond through Atdarock Photography