Department of Health officials expressed pleasant surprise Saturday that Matson Inc.’s estimated 233,000-gallon molasses spill in Honolulu Harbor last week seems to be dissipating faster than predicted.

Peering down at the dark blue water from aboard a boat Saturday, the state’s environmental health chief said it was looking good.

“This was chocolate milk,” said Gary Gill of the Health Department, referring to the harbor’s earlier appearance.

State officials, the Coast Guard and Matson invited the media to tour the harbor on Saturday to view the status of the water quality after the molasses spill that’s captured the world’s attention.

Gill said Keehi Lagoon will remain closed to recreational activity through the weekend until officials assess it again on Monday.

While the harbor area near the origin of the spill is beginning to show signs of normalcy, the lagoon continues to exhibit the below-normal oxygen levels that officials contend caused the fish to die off in droves.

Chris Lee, Matson’s incident commander, said the spill was reported Monday morning but that the molasses was likely pumping in a faulty pipe from Sept. 7 around 6 p.m. to the morning of Sept. 8. He said he was onboard the SS Maui that day and no one noticed anything indicative of the massive molasses spill to come.

Contracted divers spent all of Monday inspecting Matson’s system but could not find the source of the leak, Lee said. It wasn’t until Tuesday, when harbor traffic cleared out and divers were able to investigate the entire length of the pier — including where Horizon Lines Inc. carries out its operation — that a broken pipe was finally spotted underneath Horizon’s part of the pier.

“We weren’t pumping, so it wasn’t like squirting out into the water at that time, but we believe that’s where the leak emanated from,” Lee said. “This is not a pipe that was on Matson’s operation, so we don’t actually use where we found the leak, but we’re the only ones that pump molasses.”

Lee explained that Matson loads ships with molasses, which is a byproduct of refining sugar on Maui, via hoses connected to orange T-shaped risers that stick up from various points along the pier and are connected to a pipeline system under the pier. He said it appears a riser might at one point have been connected to the faulty pipe but was replaced with a now-deteriorated valve.

Divers discovered the leak below the valve in a 90-degree bend in the pipe. Lee said contractors plugged up the hole and are working on evacuating the pipes of all molasses so Matson can devise a more permanent solution.

Lee said Matson doesn’t know the historical context of the pipe and that it is working with the state Department of Transportation, which owns the pier, to figure it out.

Contractors that have been removing dead fish also had less to do on Saturday. A small crew collected about 45 dead fish, mostly eels and pufferfish, a crewmember said.

Gill said the spill has killed an estimated 14,000 fish. He said earlier counts focused mainly on large species but that the numbers shot up when crews began removing small fish from the shoreline.

University of Hawaii researchers said Friday that all of the coral beds directly below the spill site and the harbor’s west end had died, and it was expected that the coral in Keehi Lagoon, where the molasses plume is drifting, would die in coming days.

The Coast Guard became an official partner in the cleanup on Friday.

“We’re simply trying to be good neighbors and help them,” Capt. Shannon Gilreath, the federal on-scene coordinator for the spill, said aboard the ship. The Department of Health remains the lead agency.

The Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have also been involved with the cleanup. Additional state organizations involved include the Department of Transportation Harbor Police, Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources, the Clean Islands Council, Hawai‘i Wildlife Center and the Health Department’s Clean Water Branch.

Gill said a natural resources damage assessment will eventually be completed and the cost for recovery will be calculated. He said previously that discharging a pollutant into state waters violates the Clean Water Act and could be punished with fines of up to $25,000 a day.

“Those things will take months to work out,” he said. “It’s all fact-based and all those facts have to be gathered.”

Gill said he plans to meet with Hawaii’s congressional delegation this week to discuss the spill.

“Molasses pipelines and the molasses industry have been under the radar,” he said. “While there have been spills in the past in the world, they’ve really never been addressed in a regulatory environment — and it’s pretty clear now what the impact can be.

“You would expect that in response to this there’s going to be a lot of ideas of changing the laws and the rules both here in the state and across the nation.”

Matson has launched a claim hotline, at 848-8300, for those affected by the spill.