Molokai community members joined forces with government, private and nonprofit entities last month to clean up “a gigantic doughnut-like ball” of fishing nets and other ocean debris from remote Halawa on the east side of the island.

A tangle of nets roughly 25 to 30 yards across included a single mass the size of a large SUV, according to a news release from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Molokai volunteers, a school class and workers from Pu‘u o Hoku Ranch and several agencies labored over the course of several weeks along a rocky shoreline to cut the pile of netting into smaller chunks and bag them, completing the task by June 21.

More than 60 large trash bags of debris were loaded onto helicopter slings and removed from Halawa beaches during the week of June 25 and flown to a staging area at the ranch, where trucks were waiting to haul some of it away for recycling and other processing, DLNR said.

The remaining debris stored at the ranch and material from a Moomomi Beach cleanup planned for August will be removed next month.

Others involved in the effort include Maui County, Sustainable Coastlines, Windward Aviation, The Nature Conservancy and Pono Pacific.