b'Written byKaua\'i Steve WerblowO\'ahu HEAD-HIGH WAVES WERE BREAKING OVER Ni\'ihau Moloka\'i THE REEF, BATTERING CLIFF KAPONO EVERY 10 Maui SECONDS OR SO AS HE SAT ON HIS SURFBOARD. Lna\'iAs the surf pounded and pushed him towards nearby Kaho\'olawe rocks, a rush of sediment-stained floodwaters from HawaiianHonoli\'i Stream threatened to sweep Kapono away Islands Hawai\'i from Hilo Bay and out to the raging ocean. A stone\'s throw from his childhood homeand from his office in the Multiscale Environmental Graphical Analysis (MEGA) Lab at the University of Hawaii at HiloDr. Kapono battled to keep in position as he measured the salinity of the turbulent mass of water beneath him, tossing him like a piece of driftwood. Hilo Bay Kapono learned to surf at the mouth of Honoli\'i MaunaStream, building skills that have propelled his pro Kea surfing career and led him to catch waves around the globe. He also learned to love and explore nature, Mauna Loa sparking a parallel career that landed him a National Hawai\'i Science Foundation-funded post-doctoral fellowship at his alma mater in Hilo. And while he has studied biochemistry all over the world, Kapono is captivated by the surprisingly healthy reef in the bay where his story started."These are some of the most biodiverse coral reefs I\'ve seen," he says from his base in Hilo. "And what\'s so cool is these corals aren\'t like the corals you would see in Finding Nemo: the big fan corals, pinks and purples and crazy colors. These are more native, endemic coralsvery Hawaiian. To me, they\'re the working-class coral of the world, and they\'re in a working-class community in Hawaii."It\'s so non-intuitive to think that we have these thriving corals, because the water is brown a lot because of the runoff," he adds. "I\'m just trying to understand why the reef is not completely destroyed like so many other places that have similar point-source pollution in their system."Whos Minding the Planet? 11'