![]() ![]() Hawaiians continue to maintain strong ties to the NWHI, making regular visits to the more accessible atolls to perpetuate traditional knowledge and protect the terrestrial and marine environments. They are considered sacred - a place of primordial darkness from which life springs, and to which spirits return after death. ![]() These islands have long held cultural and spiritual significance for Native Hawaiians, who visited and used them for thousands of years before the first Westerners came ashore. During the process of designating the area as a sanctuary, a cultural group worked to find a name that would honor the genealogy and formation of the islands: Papahānaumokuākea, a title that speaks of a fertile woman giving birth to a stretch of islands beneath a benevolent sky. A decade later, President Obama nearly doubled the protected area to cover more than 582,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean, making it one of the largest marine preserves in the world. ![]() These kūpuna (ancestor) islands now form the core of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a designation given by President Bush in 2006 that highlighted the importance of protecting its biological diversity and cultural significance. Reef dwellers, such as banded angelfish and damselfish, flit above the coral in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Each time she dug a fire pit, seawater extinguished the flames, until she reached Hawai‘i Island, where her fire still burns today. The story of the goddess Pele captures the chronology and origin of the Islands: Pele worked her way down the chain from Ni‘ihau to Maui, searching for an island to call home. In the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant, a coral polyp is the first life to emerge from the slimy darkness, explaining its role in the formation and function of modern-day marine ecosystems. The Western theory of plate tectonics was first posited in the early 1960s to explain the volcanic origins of the archipelago, but ancient Hawaiians had a narrative for its birth long before. Kioea migrate nearly 2,500 miles from Hawai‘i to Alaska in the spring to breed. Beyond the atolls to the north lie the Emperor Seamounts, whose inevitable journey back to the center of the earth began some 81 million years ago.Ī kioea (bristle-thighed curlew) tiptoes through marine debris washed ashore on Hōlanikū. Now, at the distinguished age of 29 million years, its highest point rises a scant 20 feet above sea level. Kure Atoll, at the farthest end of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), once stood tall and proud. The movement of our remote archipelago - rising, sliding and sinking - has been on auto-play for millennia. While the youngest and highest still straddle the stationary hot spot, older rocks ride the plate toward an imminent watery abyss. Oft forgotten, however, is the string of islands, atolls and shoals that are slowly, inexorably, being shuttled northwestward from their place of origin by the steady creep of the Pacific plate. Recent spectacular eruptions remind us that the birth of each island occurs over a hot spot deep below the surface of the sea. Story by Teya Penniman | Photography by Zach Pezzillo A flock of noio kōhā (brown noddies) take flight over the lagoon at Hōlanikū (Kure Atoll).įor many people - tourists and residents alike - the map of Hawai‘i runs from Kaua‘i to the southernmost end of Hawai‘i Island, aka Moku o Keawe. ![]()
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