Hawaii's visitor rules get repeated across a lot of travel pages, and two of them are repeated wrong often enough that it is worth being precise.
Everything below is taken from the statute or the agency that enforces it, and each section says which. Where a number is a legal requirement it says so. Where it is a recommendation, it says that instead, because the difference changes what you are actually risking.
The sunscreen ban is a sales ban
This is the part almost everyone gets wrong. Act 104, passed in 2018 and in force since 1 January 2021, makes it unlawful to sell, offer for sale or distribute sunscreen containing oxybenzone or octinoxate in Hawaii without a prescription.
It does not prohibit possessing it, packing it or wearing it. A visitor who arrives with a bottle bought on the mainland is not committing an offense and is not going to be fined at a beach. The obligation falls on retailers.
That is not a reason to bring it. The law exists because those two compounds are implicated in coral damage, and the point of the trip is the reef. But if you have read somewhere that you can be penalised for what is in your bag, that is not what the statute says.
Act 104, Session Laws of Hawaii 2018.
Maui County is much stricter
Maui County, which covers Maui, Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi, went considerably further. Ordinance 5306, in force since 1 October 2022, bans the sale and distribution of all non-mineral sunscreen.
Non-mineral means anything whose active ingredient is not zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. That is a much broader rule than the state one: a sunscreen can be entirely legal to sell in Honolulu and not legal to sell in Kīhei.
Again the obligation is on the seller, and again the only exception is a prescription. The practical consequence for a visitor is simply that if you plan to buy sunscreen after you land on Maui, expect mineral only, and expect it to cost more than it does at home.
Maui County on the mineral-only ordinance.
What to actually pack
Buy a mineral sunscreen before you fly and the question disappears on every island. Look for zinc oxide or titanium dioxide as the active ingredient, and ignore the phrase "reef safe" on the front of a bottle, which is unregulated marketing and appears on plenty of products containing exactly the compounds Hawaii banned.
Read the active ingredients panel instead. It is the only part of the label that is a legal statement.
Wildlife distances: two are law, two are guidance
Four distances get quoted together as though they were the same kind of rule. They are not.
| Animal | Distance | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Humpback whale | 100 yards | Federal law |
| Spinner dolphin | 50 yards | Federal law |
| Hawaiian monk seal | 50 feet | NOAA recommendation |
| Green sea turtle (honu) | 10 feet | NOAA recommendation |
The humpback and spinner dolphin rules are specific federal prohibitions with a number in them. For humpbacks the 100 yards applies by any means: boat, kayak, swimming, paddleboard and drone. For spinner dolphins, federal rules prohibit swimming with, approaching or remaining within 50 yards.
NOAA Fisheries, viewing marine wildlife in Hawaiʻi.
Why the distinction matters
It would be simpler if all four were fixed distances, and it is tempting for a travel page to present them that way. The reality is more useful to know.
Monk seals and sea turtles are protected by laws that prohibit harassment rather than proximity. The Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act do not specify a number of feet. What they prohibit is behavior that disturbs the animal or disrupts what it is doing.
Two consequences follow. You can be well outside 50 feet from a resting monk seal and still be in the wrong if you are crowding it, using a flash, or blocking its route back to the water. And you can be inside 10 feet of a turtle that swam up to you while you floated still, and not be in the wrong at all.
The recommended distances are good advice for staying on the right side of that line. They are not the line itself. Move away, stay quiet, do not follow, and let the animal decide the distance.
Penalties, stated carefully
Both statutes carry civil and criminal penalties, and the exact figures are worth treating with care because civil penalty amounts are adjusted for inflation and are republished periodically.
The Endangered Species Act sets a civil penalty of up to $25,000 per violation for a knowing violation, and criminal penalties of up to $50,000, up to a year's imprisonment, or both. The Marine Mammal Protection Act carries civil penalties per violation and, for criminal violations, a fine of up to $100,000 and up to a year's imprisonment.
Those are the statutory figures. The civil amounts actually assessed are adjusted upward for inflation, so a current schedule is the thing to check rather than any number quoted on a travel page, including this one. In practice most visitor incidents end in a warning rather than a penalty, and the enforcement that does happen often follows video the visitor posted publicly themselves.
ESA section 11, penalties and enforcement. NOAA on the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Drones are not a loophole
Worth its own line because it catches people out. The 100-yard humpback rule explicitly covers drones, and flying one close to any protected animal can constitute harassment regardless of how far away you are standing.
Separately, drones are prohibited in all units of the National Park System, which includes Haleakalā and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes, and Hawaii state parks require a permit. Between those two, most of the places worth photographing from the air are places you may not.
Using this page
Quote or link any of it. If a rule here has changed, tell us and it will be corrected and re-dated rather than quietly edited.
The cultural side of visiting well is a different subject and covered in the etiquette guide. The bookings that are legally required rather than merely advisable are in the reservation timeline.
