KANEOHE, Hawaii — A pinky and thumb extended with the remaining fingers curled down: That’s the “shaka” in Hawaii.
The gesture is sometimes known outside the islands as the “hang loose” sign associated with surf culture, but it was a fixture of daily life in the islands long before it caught on in California, Brazil and beyond. People in Hawaii have a variety of shaka styles and use it to convey a range of warmhearted sentiments, from hi and bye to thanks and aloha, among other meanings.
When captains of the Lahainaluna High School football team, from the Maui community devastated by last summer’s deadly wildfire, were invited to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas last month, they flashed shakas for the cameras.
Now, a pair of bills in the state Legislature would make the shaka the state’s official gesture and recognize Hawaii as its birthplace.
Advertisement
Sen. Glenn Wakai, who introduced the Senate version, said he can’t imagine the measure meeting any opposition and expects it to “sail through.”
Here are some things to know about Hawaii’s shaka — including its purported origin with a seven-fingered fisherman.
WHAT IS THE SHAKA?
Mailani Makainai, great-great-granddaughter of Hamana Kalili who is known as the father of shaka, poses for a portrait at her home on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Credit: AP/Mengshin Lin
On paper, the House bill notes that the “shaka generally consists of extending the thumb and smallest finger while holding the three middle fingers curled, and gesturing in salutation while presenting the front or back of the hand; the wrist may be rotated back and forth for emphasis.”
Advertisement
In practice, the shaka is far more nuanced.
Some say the only requirement is an extended pinky and thumb. Others say shaking the shaka is a no-no.
Those from beach or rural communities tend not to shake their shakas. But in the capital city of Honolulu, it’s common.
Mailani Makainai, great-great-granddaughter of Hamana Kalili who is known as the father of shaka, shows a family photo at her home on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Credit: AP/Mengshin Lin
“It’s just a strong movement — one movement,” said Chase Lee, who grew up just outside Honolulu. He was taught never to shake the shaka. If you do, “you’re a tourist,” he said.
But Erin Issa, one of his colleagues at Central Pacific Bank, likes to wag hers.
Advertisement
“I’m a very animated person,” she said. “I feel awkward if I’m just standing still.”
She prefers to flash a shaka with the palm facing outwards, as a sign of respect: “It’s shaka-ing to you, not to me.”
“As long as you get your pinky finger and your thumb out, you can wave it or you can just do just a flat shaka,” Dennis Caballes, a Honolulu resident, said while fishing at a beach park.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
The shaka carries friendliness and warmth — aloha spirit. Some hold it low when greeting a child, and some like to flash double shakas. It can convey greetings, gratitude or assent, or it can defuse tension. It was particularly useful in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were afraid to shake hands.
Advertisement
“It’s such a versatile gesture,” said state Rep. Sean Quinlan, who introduced the House bill at the behest of a documentary filmmaker exploring the sign’s backstory.
Big Island state Rep. Jeanné Kapela, one of the House bill’s co-sponsors, said residents are “so lucky to have a visual signal for sharing aloha with each other.”
Shakas can avert altercations when people are cut off in traffic, said Wakai, the state senator who introduced the Senate version.
“The angst toward that driver kind of just immediately gets reduced,” Wakai said.
WHERE DOES THE SHAKA COME FROM?
Advertisement
The prevailing story of the shaka’s origin traces back to a Native Hawaiian fisherman named Hāmana Kalili, who lived on Oahu’s North Shore in the early 1900s. Mailani Makaʻīnaʻi, Kalili’s great-great-granddaughter, wants the bills amended to include his name — something lawmakers are considering.
Kalili lost three fingers in a sugar mill accident, she said.
After the mishap, Kalili worked as a guard on a train. Kids who jumped the train for a free ride would curl their middle fingers to mimic Kalili’s injured hand, giving other train-jumpers the all-clear, said Steve Sue, who researched shaka for his documentary.
Other residents adopted Kalili’s three-finger-less wave more broadly, according to family lore, and it spread, possibly fueled by the waves of tourists that began arriving after World War II.
“I love the compassion part of it, you know, where, ‘Oh, okay, he doesn’t have all three fingers. So, I’m going to say hi the way he’s saying hi,’” Makaʻīnai said. “It’s the idea that … I’m like you and you’re like me.”
Advertisement
There’s a bronze statue of Kalili, his right arm extended into a shaka, at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie.
There are various theories about how the term “shaka” became associated with the gesture. Some have suggested that the name came from Japan’s Shaka Buddha.
HOW IS THE SHAKA USED NOW?
The sign has spread around the world since the surfing boom of the 1950s and ’60s. It’s popular in Brazil, where it’s been used by martial arts aficionados. Brazil soccer greats Ronaldinho and Neymar Jr. incorporated it into their goal celebrations.
The shaka is such an integral part of Hawaii life that it’s easy to miss, said Sen. Chris Lee, chair of the Committee on Transportation and Culture and the Arts.
Advertisement
Some Honolulu city buses are outfitted with a digital shaka light that bus drivers can turn on to thank motorists for letting them merge. Texters have co-opted the “call me” emoji to symbolize the shaka, and local station KHON-TV has ended each evening newscast since the 1970s with clips of people flashing shakas.
Longtime KHON anchor Howard Dashefsky said throwing a shaka is almost a reflex when people in the community recognize him and call his name.
“There’s a lot of other places where you only get a one-finger gesture,” he said.
Shakas also come out naturally when people from Hawaii are somewhere else in the world and want to display connection to their island roots.
Businesses often use the shaka to project community belonging.
Advertisement
Central Pacific Bank, for example, called their digital checking account Shaka Checking at the suggestion of electronic banking manager Florence Nakamura.
“It makes people feel good when they receive one,” she said.
As detections of the highly destructive coconut rhinoceros beetle in West Hawaii continue to climb, two bills making their way through the state Legislature aim to slow the bugs’ spread in markedly different ways.
Senate Bill 2925 establishes a tax income credit for property owners growing coconut palms for food who choose to control CRB through “natural management practices” — language which has drawn opposition from some Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity (DAB) officials because it omits the use of certain pesticides.
The tax credit is meant to offset some of the costs of eradication and management efforts, and beneficiaries would have to certify that no “systemic or prohibited” pesticides have been used. The legislation appropriates funds for two full-time environmental health specialist positions tasked with conducting inspections.
The House Committee on Economic Development and Technology voted unanimously to pass the bill on March 25. From there it was referred to the Finance Committee.
Advertisement
In tandem with the Senate tax bill, House Bill 2207 requires DAB to establish a “Biosecurity Government-Industry Working Group” where education, training, supplies, equipment and pest management programs are provided to private industries, which will in-turn supply labor, surveillance, some treatment equipment and response readiness.
HB 2207 includes legal protections for government workers entering private property to do pest eradication work. It also allows for the sale and distribution in the state of fine mesh nets — currently restricted due to their illegal use in fishing — as an effective CRB control measure. The Senate Committee on Agriculture and Environment passed the measure on March 24 and referred it to the Ways and Means Committee.
Franny Brewer is the program manager at the Big Island Invasive Species Committee, a University of Hawaii partnership working to protect the island from harmful invasive plants and animals. Brewer supports HB 2207’s loosening of restrictions on mesh nets because they offer a poison-free CRB control for homeowners and small-scale farmers.
“They are a good deterrent,” she said. “You can put them in the palm trees, and they’ll provide a barrier to prevent the beetle from actually burrowing in. That’s a great use for people who don’t want to use pesticides. It’s one of the important tools, and I think just being able to have that be legally available to use without running afoul of the rules about fishing nets is very helpful.”
For large-scale CRB eradication, though, she admits that pesticide application — often using drones — called “crown sprays” are still the most cost-effective and least labor-intensive solution.
Advertisement
“Certainly for us in the case of a response, you know if something pops up in a new area, that’s what we’d recommend, that a drone is used,” she said. “If you’re managing a large amount of land, and you need to hit a lot of different trees, I think that’s probably the relatively cheapest way to go. Now, if you’re just a resident, and you have a backyard with a couple of palm trees, you might want to go in a different direction.”
A large armored insect native to South Asia, the beetle has killed or damaged more than a thousand coconut palms across Oahu in the past decade, and also threatens bananas, sugarcane, papayas, sisal and pineapple plants. It was first found on Hawaii Island in the Waikoloa area in October 2023 and — after almost two years of little to no detection — the number of adult and larval beetles tallied in north and central Kailua-Kona began to tick up significantly starting in mid-2025.
An on-site inspection of Keahole Agricultural Park by several different agencies last July uncovered two active breeding sites at a landscape nursery, discovering 110 late-state larvae and three adult beetles. Since then, officials have been steadily finding an average of roughly 30 adult beetles per month along with varying numbers of larvae.
Rep. Kirstin Kahaloa represents Kailua-Kona, Honaunau and Keauhou — areas of the island including or near to CRB hotspots. Kahaloa co-introduced HB 2207 at the beginning of this year.
“I want Hawaii Island to have all the tools in the toolbox,” she told the Tribune-Herald. “And this particular mesh net opportunity was not a tool that Oahu has had as one of the methods for CRB mitigation, and we just want to have all options available.”
Advertisement
She fears that if CRB populations are not contained and eradicated before they spread, areas of Hawaii Island could begin to show the same devastation seen on the first island they infested.
“I’ve been to parts of Oahu where a whole bay area that was lined with coconut trees, there’s only like half of them left, and there’s just dead sticks,” she said. “No fronds. It changes the whole landscape, and it’s really sad.”
Stopping this from happening, she said, is one of the most important efforts of her tenure at the state capitol.
“It took about 10 years for Oahu to kind of be overridden across different parts of the entire island,” she said. “So, I’m trying to make it my calling that that doesn’t happen and that we protect biosecurity, because pretty much any biosecurity threat that has come to Hawaii Island usually has turned into something that is now a part of our community … it tends to not stay regional. It tends to migrate islandwide.”
Kahaloa feels that it will take a “collective effort” by state, county and private entities to get a handle on the problem, which HB 2207 strives to do by establishing the Government-Industry Working Group — something she admits is imperfect.
Advertisement
“It takes a village, and it takes a team,” she said. “There are a lot of different entities doing different things. Everybody is sort of working within the silos and the scope of what they do, and what happens is some things get slowed down. We just need to find a better way.”
Other state bills trying to combat the beetles have either stalled or been deferred.
Senate Bill 2885, which would create mandatory handling and storage rules for CRB host material and establish penalties for breaking them, was deferred by the House Agriculture and Food Systems Committee last month.
House Bill 643, which would establish short-term management initiatives for CRB response by training tree trimmers, arborists and landscapers in “best practices” stalled last April.
Senate Bill 746 sought to establish a pilot program offering bounties on captured CRB specimens, but stalled last year and was carried over to the 2026 legislative session but hasn’t moved since.
Advertisement
Email Stefan Verbano at stefan.verbano@hawaiitribune-herald.com
Hawaiian Electric gave customers a head’s up today that typical residential bills may rise between 20% and 30% over the next several months due to global oil prices driven higher over the last month due to the war in Iran and other geopolitical tensions.
Oahu customers will start seeing higher April bills, followed by Hawaii island and Maui County customers seeing increases in May and June, according to the company.
The utility relies heavily on imported oil to generate electricity, and under state regulatory rules is allowed to pass on much of the higher costs for oil to customers, and likewise lowers bills when oil prices fall.
“As an island state that relies heavily on imported fuel for electricity generation and transportation, Hawaii is particularly sensitive to global fossil fuel price fluctuations,” the company said.
Advertisement
Hawaiian Electric, which has about 474,000 customers, said it will make options available starting Monday for customers to work with service representatives to spread out bill impacts, including through interest-free payment plans for up to six months.
“We’re committed to supporting our communities during times of uncertainty and we’re hopeful this price surge ends quickly,” Rebecca Dayhuff Matsushima, company vice president of customer service, said in a statement. “Providing interest-free payment options is one way we can help customers manage through temporary cost pressures while continuing to meet their energy needs.”
Don’t miss out on what’s happening!
Stay in touch with breaking news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It’s FREE!
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Moderate to locally breezy trades will taper off today and tomorrow, becoming light and variable by this weekend.
Shower activity will be kept to a minimum with just a few windward and mauka clouds and showers through the end of the week. Next week, models begin to hint at a front developing, which may bring precipitation to the Hawaiian islands.
The current N/NE swell is dropping, moderate NW pulses are due over the weekend. South shores will continue to get minor pulses through the weekend.
Download HNN’s weather app for everything you need to plan your day.(Hawaii News Now)
,
Advertisement
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
