Image from NPS video by Janice Wei

(BIVN) – The Holei Sea Arch overlook in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park remains closed due to instability observed on the coastal cliffs, however the sea arch itself still stands.

“The arch is still there,” Ben Hayes, the park’s director of interpretation, said last week. “It is still viewable from several places along the coast, the cliffs. The observation area – the place that has been identified for … decades as a good viewpoint – we determined is no longer safe and so that is closed. There are other places to view the sea arch.”

The closure was announced in January, after new cracks were observed. The short trail from the end of Chain of Craters Road to the sea arch overlook has been closed and roped off ever since. 

“We did have a geomorphologist here in the park” last week, Hayes said, “who also looked at that observation point and also a potential new observation point that we plan to more thoroughly establish.”

The Holei Sea Arch is 90 feet high and was formed about 550 years ago, park officials say.

“As with all of the sea cliffs, approaching sea cliffs is dangerous for visitors so we we do have signage out there that warns people,” Hayes said. “They are being continually eroded, undercut, and they are falling. That’s just the natural processes at work at the coast.”

“The sea arch is still there and it is viewable from other places along the coast,” Hayes said. “We will soon identify a specific safe new observation area in the coming weeks.”