The Sunscreen in Your Suitcase May Not Be Legal to Buy Here
Hawaii’s Act 104 made it unlawful, beginning January 1, 2021, to sell, offer for sale or distribute for sale any sunscreen containing oxybenzone or octinoxate in the state without a prescription. The law covers selling, not carrying, so nobody is going through your bag at the airport. It still tells you something plain about what goes in the water off Kona, and it is the reason our crews ask what you are wearing before you get in.
What the Law Actually Says, and What It Doesn’t
Act 104 is a sales restriction. It bars retailers in Hawaii from selling or distributing sunscreen containing those two chemicals without a prescription from a licensed health care provider, and it has been in force since the start of 2021.
Two practical effects follow from that. Anything you buy on the Big Island already meets the standard, so the easy move is to leave the mainland bottle at home and pick one up after you land. Several Hawaii-made brands are sold across the island, Ao Organics, Malama Kuleana, Raw Love and Little Hands Hawaii among them, and all of them build around mineral filters. The law says nothing about what you bring with you. That is how half the sunscreen on any Kona boat is still the wrong kind.
→ questions we get asked before a trip
The law has been coming for a while. Hawaii passed Act 104 in 2018 and gave retailers until the start of 2021 to clear their shelves, so a bottle bought on this island has met the standard for five seasons now. A bottle bought anywhere else has met nothing in particular, whatever the front of it says.
The ingredient list is the only thing worth reading. Turn the bottle over and look at the actives. If oxybenzone or octinoxate appear, it does not come on the boat with you. If the actives are zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, you are fine. The front label is less useful; “reef safe” is unregulated and anybody can print it.
One less thing to carry: reef-safe sunscreen is included on our afternoon reef and manta adventure, so a forgotten bottle on that trip is not a problem.
What to Wear Instead of More Sunscreen
The best answer to a four-hour boat day in the tropics is not a better bottle, it is less exposed skin.
A long-sleeve rash guard covers the two areas that burn worst on a snorkeler, the shoulders and the back of the neck, and it keeps covering them for the whole trip with nothing to reapply and nothing to wash off into the water. Most of our trips put you in a wetsuit anyway, which does the same job. What remains is the face, the ears, the back of the hands and the backs of the knees, and a small amount of mineral cream handles those.
Children are the ones worth thinking about twice. A rash guard on a kid settles the reapplication argument before it starts, and on a boat where everybody is wet and busy at the same time, that is the version that holds up.
Apply it before you board, not once you are on the boat. Mineral sunscreen needs a few minutes to settle, and anything that goes on wet skin at the rail mostly ends up in the harbor.
→ manta ray diving and snorkeling in Kona
One more thing that surprises people: on the evening trips you need less of it than you think and warmth matters more. The manta runs go out at the end of the day, and the thing to pack for those is a dry layer for the ride back in.
→ day cruises along the Kona coast
Why Kona Crews Care More Than Most
Our boats work the same stretch of reef every day, which concentrates whatever goes into the water in a small number of places.
The Kona coast sits in the lee of the island. The water is calm and does not flush the way an exposed shoreline does, and once you add a few dozen operators working the same handful of sites day after day through the season, the arithmetic stops being abstract. Hawaii’s legislature wrote the concern into Act 104 itself, finding that the two chemicals have significant harmful impacts on the state’s marine environment and the ecosystems living in it, coral reefs included.
So the request from our crew is not a sustainability slogan, it is housekeeping. Rinse off at your condo instead of in the shower at the harbor. Skip the spray cans, which drift onto the deck and wash straight off it. And if you did bring the wrong bottle, say so when you check in and we will sort you out rather than have you go without.
→ snorkel adventure and reef excursion
Come Prepared, or Come and Ask
If you are unsure about what is in your bag, bring it to the harbor and show the crew. It takes ten seconds to read the back of a bottle and it saves an argument in the water.
Check in with us at Honokohau Marina on Kealakehe Parkway in Kailua-Kona, or start at konaoceanadventures.com.