Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 27, Number 6, 1 June 2010 — Up close and [ARTICLE]

Up close and

By Kathy Muneno

Jim Kauahikaua says if he could have picked five years to be the Scientist-in-Charge at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, he would have picked the exact five he has served so far. Not that he was bored for his first 15 years in the job, it's just that the last five-and-a-half years have been that great. The "changes have been amazing," he says. The type of activity seen at Kīlauea hasn't been seen in nearly two centuries of recorded eruptions. The whole "plumbing" has changed in the last five years, he said. There has been an eruption at Kīlauea's summit, making it the first time he's sure of that there are two eruptions at the same time on the same voleano - the other along the east rift zone. He says lava flowing onto the crater floor has heeome a possibility

just in the last six months and the summit activity provides a sight he never tires of witnessing: "A night doesn't go by you don't see a glow there. It's beautiful." Growing up in Kailua, O'ahu, Kauahikaua spent some time during summers at the Volcano House, where his unele was a manager. But even then, the Kamehameha Schools graduate never dreamed of working on Kīlauea, let alone overseeing the tracking and study of all of Hawai'i's volcanoes. He simply knew he "wanted to work outdoors," and never having had the opportunity to study geology, he headed for an oceanography major at Pomona College in California. That is, until he took a geological oceanography class, and he thought, "This (geology) was a eool other option." He switched majors and never looked back. Kauahikaua went on to earn