Chapter 9 - The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Marine Protected Areas

Summary

The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) is located in the northwestern part of the Hawaiian Archipelago and is one of the world's largest marine protected areas. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) consist of a group of small, remote islands and atolls northwest of the Kauai and Niihau islands and include one of the most pristine coral reef ecosystems in the world. This ecosystem supports a large number of apex predators and other endemic species and is a critical habitat for many threatened and endangered species. In June 2006, almost 140,000 square miles of this marine environment were designated as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands MNM; one year later, the area was renamed Papahānaumokuākea.

The PMNM also encompasses the Midway Atoll, which has been in the media in recent years due to the vast quantities of marine plastic debris that litter its shores and threaten the Laysan Albatross that nests in the NWHI region (Figure 9.1). In addition to the more well-known Laysan Albatross, however, the national monument is also a transit corridor that is used by approximately 14 million seabirds of different species for breeding, foraging, and stopping over during migrations. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands also provide an important stopover habitat for shorebirds as they migrate through the central Pacific and are home to the Laysan Finch, Nihoa Finch, and Nihoa Millerbird, which are all endangered and found only on “one or a few islands, putting their populations at risk from predators, storms, and other catastrophic events.” Finally, “at least six species of terrestrial plants found only in the region are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, some so rare that because of the difficulty of surveying these remote islands, they have not been documented for many years.”

The Creation of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM)

At the time that PMNM was created in 2006, it already “covered 140,000 square miles of ocean around the uninhabited northwestern islands of Hawaii.” Then, in 2016, former president Barack Obama expanded the boundaries of the national monument, which “more than quadrupled Papahānaumokuākea's size, to 582,578 square miles, an area larger than all the national parks combined.”