for public use. It was initially a favorite fishing and picnic spot for residents who were willing to travel out to the bay. In the 1930s the road along Hanauma Bay's corner of Oahu was paved and a few other amenities provided that made it easier to visit the beach and reef. After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, barbed wire was placed at the beach and a bunker was constructed for use by sentries. The Bay area reopened after the war and became even more visitor friendly after blasting in the reef for a transoceanic cable provided room for swimming. Hawaii-themed films and television shows, including Blue Hawaii, Paradise, Hawaiian Style, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Hawaii Five-O, and Magnum, P.I., shot footage at the bay. In 1967, it was set apart by the State division of Fish and Game as a Marine Protected Area, a term used generically to describe any marine area that had some or all of its resources protected. In Hanauma Bay's case everything became protected, from the fish to the reef, to the sand itself. A volunteer group set up a booth at the beach and began teaching visitors about conservation of the reef and fish who lived there. More changes in the 1970s by the City cleared more area in the reef for swimming, made an additional parking lot, and shipped in white sand from the North Shore, leaving Hanauma Bay increasingly more attractive to visitors. By the late 1980s, the bay had become a major attraction on Oahu. Tourists were brought in by the busload and sometimes as many as 13,000 visitors descended on the beach in one day. Most were uneducated about the fragile marine ecosystem and, unwittingly, "these crowds stirred up sediment, disturbed and trampled the coral and algae, dropped trash, fed the fish and left a slick of suntan lotion on the bay's surface." Consequently, the beautiful multicolored coral reef closest to the beach died; only its blackened skeleton is visible today. By 1990, overuse of the beach and surrounding area was a real problem, with visitors walking on the reef, swarming the surrounding areas, parking on the grass and on the sides of the road. Commercial filming was banned during that year. Measures were taken to limit use and so visitor access was limited to the parking lot, and when it was full everyone after was turned away. In 1997,