Last fall, Civil Beat journalist Nathan Eagle accompanied a team of marine biologists on a 25-day research expedition to the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as they assessed the health of one of the few remaining places in the world that is truly wild.
The vast protected place known as Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is an environmental and cultural wonder few are ever allowed to access. It also is threatened by a warming planet and a mysterious invasive species.
And it has long been in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump.
With notebook, camera, drone and scuba gear, Eagle joined the scientists in sharky waters on dozens of dives as they checked up on the reefs, counted the diverse fish — thousands found nowhere else in the world — and returned to sites suffering from rising seas, stronger storms and a “devil seaweed” smothering swaths of coral the size of football fields.
The days were grueling but the trip was essential to fully capture how climate change is affecting life in and around these uninhabited atolls. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration team discovered reasons for hope and reasons to sound the alarm.
A small island that an unexpectedly strong hurricane had wiped off the map in 2018 was re-emerging. As a result, the single most important nesting site for threatened Hawaiian green sea turtles was again above water, and drone footage shot by Eagle proved they were back. Through the ship’s on-again, off-again WiFi, an image from the video was shared with a top turtle scientist, who would excitedly identify hundreds of fresh nesting pits.
But farther up the archipelago, a previously unidentified seaweed was blanketing reefs and spreading in the Pacific. The destruction it’s causing there is a major concern in and of itself, but so too is its potential to wreak environmental and economic havoc on the Main Hawaiian Islands, where reefs are already more vulnerable from polluted runoff and where thousands of jobs depend on a healthy ocean. The scientists froze samples to bring back to the lab to learn more.
