The GP's post tracks with my recollection from the time. On the return leg of one of the very first trips to Maui three pickup trucks were found with beds full of lava rock, allegedly collected without permission or permits. This was the inciting incident that seemed to confirm the neighbor islands' residents fears that the Superferry would lead to plundering of cultural resources en masse (not to mention making existing overcrowding worse). On a subsequent trip to kauai a large number of protestors (or protectors I suppose, depending on your view) paddled out on surfboards and blocked the ferry's path at Nawiliwili.

Here's a contemporaneous report about the lava rocks from an independent journalist: http://www.islandbreath.org/2007Year/09-access&transport/070...

The rocks weren't the direct cause of the Superferry shutting down, but in my recollection they sure charted the course that way: people who might have seemed to some like they were just fighting change to fight change suddenly had irrefutable evidence to confirm their fears. There were of course other legal challenges that actually led to the shutdown, bankruptcy, and subsequent abandonment of the vessels. But at the time, on the neighbor islands, it sure crystalized the opposition.