Pacific Islands Coral Reef Project - National Park Service

In early years the Pacific National Parks were "terrestrial" parks. Their boundaries ended at the shoreline. The original Hawaii National Park and The City of Refuge were established specifically because of live volcanoes and Hawaiian archeology. But, beginning in the 1970's most new national parks in the Pacific extended into the sea--well beyond the reefs. Yet, we thought these as benign seas--wild shorelines and beaches, scenically beautiful, with "inexhaustible" resources less complicated and demanding than terrestrial island ecosystems with endangered species components and huge resource preservation problems.

A decade ago, with the advent of a national "Coral Reef Initiative," the Pacific National Parks hired small crews of marine scientists as an NPS component of the "Initiative." NPS placed marine ecologists at War-in-the Pacific, Samoa, Kalaupapa, and Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Parks, and one at the UH Manoa CESU. They looked beneath the ocean surface--perhaps as a first time for the National Parks in the Pacific.

A first revelation was of awe and amazement--even enrapture--at the sheer beauty and enormous biodiversity of these park waters. View the parks' first impressions: