In what has become a touching annual Memorial Day tradition, thousands of people went to Ala Moana Beach Park on Monday to witness 2,000 floating lanterns being pushed out to sea as a symbol of the souls of the departed.

But what happens to the lanterns after they leave the shore? On twitter, @aloha_erica and @pamchun asked my colleague Noelle Chun to dig into it, and Noelle passed it along to me.

As your land and environment reporter-host, I’m happy to report that the event’s organizers go to great lengths to ensure that the lanterns don’t get far and don’t have a chance to contribute to the epidemic of marine debris.

The Honolulu Advertiser story I linked to above, written by Gordon Y.K. Pang, reports that “volunteers retrieve the lanterns from the water at the end of the evening, and store them away for use the following year.” Also, the Shinnyo-en Buddhist church heads a beach cleanup the day after the ceremony.

The event’s official website addresses the issue as one of its frequently asked questions, and says that “Every lantern will be retrieved and reused.” I asked the Na Lei Aloha Foundation, the event’s sponsor, how that goal is reached.

Sonja Swenson, a public relations specialist for the firm Stryker, Weiner and Yokota, got back to me with this response on Wednesday evening:

Thanks for your patience. I am still waiting to hear back from the Lantern Floating organizers about the lantern retrieval as they are still in the process of cleaning up and counting the lanterns. In the meantime, following are the steps they take to retrieve the lanterns after the ceremony:

1. Eight canoes with six volunteer retrievers on each canoe
2. There are two catchment lines for safety
3. Volunteers on surfboards also retrieve lanterns
4. Two dinghies
5. Beach clean-up the following morning

Over the years, they have been able to retrieve all of the wooden and surfboard lanterns, but there have been instances that some of the rubber foam lanterns that are given out to the public were not retrieved because the person receiving the lantern kept it instead of sailing it out in the waters during the ceremony. I will keep you posted when I get more details from Shinnyo-en.

And when I hear more details, I’ll post them here at Civil Beat.

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