Maui Declares Emergency for Unexplained Shortage of Noni Fruit

Maui County has issued an emergency notice for a very unusual shortage of noni fruit, the nearly-impossible-to-eat fruit that looks like feet after too much sun while wearing Crocs.

Typically noni can be found growing in the wild in many parts of the island, so county agriculture officials rarely express concerns about its availability.

Then this year, ag inspectors noticed a detectable decline in the noni numbers from month to month.

"Honestly, these things smell so bad we never worry about tourists taking too many with them in their car," said Jerry Thomasson, director for distinct plant species the the Maui County Department of Agriculture. "And even if they do, they never do it twice."

A local couple camping at Olowalu last week reported a strange shortage of the spotted fruit among the various orchard trees at the campground. Those noni trees are usually packed with the fruit, they said.

"We usually take a few home with us after carefully zipping them up in sandwich bags individually, to later carefully squish up to mix the juice with anything to kill the smell and taste," said Jezebel Willer of Kihei. "They're super good for you, so we make smoothies with everything we can find in the kitchen, plus whiskey.

"But this year at the campground they were few and far between, which saddened us," she said. "We were trying to save money by avoiding Whole Foods for the rest of the year."

Often called the cheese fruit due to an odor resembling that of Limburger cheese, the alien-looking fruit is known to provide a host of medicinal benefits due to its composition with multiple essential antioxidants and ultra-healthy nutrients.

However, the fruit produces an odor that has been described by locals in a number of ways:

- "Like bleu cheese."

- "Rotten damp dish rag."

- "Moist old swamp roots."

- "Exhausted hikers with nose rings from Portland."

County ag officials last summer engaged a fruit-growth specialist to try to determine the cause. So far the only solid clues lead to use of the fruit as a weapon.

"We found a suitcase full of noni at the airport, which someone hilarious tried to sneak past TSA, those poor agents," said Gordy Huakake of Gord0 & Associates based in Wailuku. "The owner said they were a gift to his mother-in-law, in preparation for a trip they planned during the upcoming busy season.

"We pressed them further because that was very unusual, and they admitted that they hoped the noni smell would scare the mother-in-law from wanting to come with them here."

Huakake said it was not the only case they ran across where the noni was weaponized, and sometimes not just against family members.

"We had this group of restaurant waitpersons from west Maui go and pick quite a few to package and send to the Canadian embassy in Honolulu, and to the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce," he said. "They were protesting how badly Canadians tip."