Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
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How it came to be
Papahānaumokuākea is a scattered chain of islands, atolls and ocean that begins about 250 km north-west of the main Hawaiian Islands and stretches some 1,931 km. Its land adds up to only about 14 square kilometres. For Native Hawaiians it is an ancestral place where life is believed to begin and where spirits return after death.
Nihoa and Mokumanamana hold many pre-European shrines, or heiau, similar in form to shrines in Tahiti, and stone figures that recall carvings in the Marquesas. About 7,000 marine species live here, a quarter of them found nowhere else, and 99% of the world's Laysan albatrosses and 98% of its black-footed albatrosses nest here.
Presidential Proclamation 8031 created the marine national monument on 15 June 2006. It was inscribed in 2010 as a mixed natural and cultural site, and in August 2016 a further proclamation greatly enlarged it to the west.
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