Four evenly spaced aircraft-deployed expendable bathythermograph and concurrent satellite advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) surveys were made over an extened area during a 1-year period to observed possible ridge currents along the Hawaiian Islands predicted or hypothesized by other investigators. None of the surveys found extended currents running along the ridge. Instead, fields of energetic eddies were found, and a curious cusp-shaped sea surface temperature pattern was observed in two of the AVHRR fields. Apparent cyclonic currents around the islands of Hawaii were also observed. We conclude that either ridge currents do not exist or that they exist but are intermittent (episodic) in nature or exist in a form more complicated than could be observed by this study. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1994