 | | | | |  | |  Monumentally Deep
America’s newest national monument is far out — in more ways than one. By Jenna Schnuer
Claire Johnson Fackler grew up swimming in Hawaii’s waters, but she’d never seen anything like this. “I could see something large coming directly toward me from about 60 feet away. The only thing I’m really supposed to be terrified of would be a tiger shark,” says the national education liaison for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine Sanctuaries Program. “So I’m trying to assess what this thing is, and it comes to within a foot of my face. It was just a really curious large ulua [a giant predatory fish]. They look like big dogs, sort of. By the time it got close enough, I was like, ‘Grab the camera! Grab the camera!’ The fear of the unknown was gone. It was just amazing to see an ocean wilderness that has this type of diversity and abundance.”
Fackler is one of a small group of scientists that have had the chance to dive in the waters of the newest U.S. national monument, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument. It takes five days to sail the 1,200 miles from Honolulu to the farthest reaches of the islands. And although the nearly 140,000-square-mile area has been, to some degree, protected since the early 1900s, a presidential proclamation signed in June 2006 guarantees that it will be kept safe from unauthorized visitors and, even more importantly, that commercial fishing in the area will be eliminated within five years, says acting superintendent ‘Aulani Wilhelm.
For researchers, a visit to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands is like diving back in time. “It’s radically different from the main Hawaiian islands and other islands where there’s a lot of fishing that goes on. You’ve got a completely different cast of characters in the ecosystem,” says John Rooney, coastal and marine geomorphologist for the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, a cooperative between NOAA and the University of Hawaii. As large predators, including sharks and uluas, and smaller types of fish are picked off, the ecosystem changes from coral dominated to algae dominated. Rooney, part of a team that is mapping the ocean floor, says the Caribbean and some areas around Florida are prime examples of this shift. But the remote location of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands has protected the area from being overfished. “You get up here and see just how unspoiled it is,” says Rooney. “To realize you’re looking at, to a large extent, how reefs were before humans came on the scene — it’s just exciting to see that and to know that you’re witnessing nature the way Mother Nature intended.”
Last summer, Rooney was one of 20 people who spent 28 days aboard the research ship Hi‘ialakai to study the area, which will take decades to map. “When I’m towing a camera sled across the seafloor, I’m looking at a seafloor that probably nobody has ever looked at,” he says.
In addition to housing the predators, coral, and sea turtles, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands also hold important pieces of world history. Historical records make it clear that there may be as many as 60 shipwrecks in the area, along with at least 67 planes — many of them Japanese and American fighters from World War II. “The way the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands stretch themselves across the ocean and the fact that they’re [packed with] low reefs and coral atolls with no navigational aids — they’re incredibly treacherous. They’re like a net, a comb lying across the Pacific. These places are shipwreck magnets,” says Hans van Tilburg, PhD, maritime heritage coordinator for the NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries Program. “You wouldn’t even know it on a dark night. You would be sailing way out in the middle of the Pacific and would run into the reefs all of a sudden. There’s no land, no mountains to see ahead of time. We know that there’s a lot more stuff out there than even the records reflect.”
While the islands’ remote location has offered some protection against fishing, it has also helped save the shipwrecks from looters — a problem in other parts of the world. Van Tilburg made one of his favorite finds so far in 2003 at Kure Atoll, the very end of the 1,300-mile island chain. There, he and his team discovered the remains of the USS Saginaw, a Civil War–era ship that crashed into a reef in 1870. After picking up divers who were attempting to clear a channel into Midway Atoll, the Saginaw was sailing home when the captain decided to see if there were any castaways stuck on Kure Atoll — “a pretty responsible thing for the captain to do,” says Van Tilburg.
It was that act of kindness that spelled doom for the Saginaw. Ninety-eight men were stranded on the island. Five boarded a small rescue boat to get help, but just one of the five survived. He relayed word of the wreck, and soon after, all the other men were rescued.
Over the past 137 years, the remains of the Saginaw have been pushed into the atoll. The dive, says Van Tilburg, is intense. “There are these huge rifled cannons from the Civil War and all these deck fittings for this steamer, which was built in 1858. We’re on the exact same spot [that] 98 guys abandoned ship onto that coral reef … and stood there shivering until the sun came up. That’s the location where we’re diving. There’s a sense of connection to a historic event. It’s very strong.”
Fackler, Rooney, and Van Tilburg all plan to spend more time exploring the islands. “They’re such a blank slate; it’s crazy,” says Rooney.
| | |
 | |  | | | |
| | |  | | | |