When the Hawaiians, the Polynesians, got here
about fifteen hundred years ago
They didn't find bare rock here. They found
a lush tropical paradise with abundant food
and resources.
And the research that we're doing now is to
try to find out why. Everything that came
here, came here from somewhere else, because
Hawai'i is in the center of the Pacific Ocean.
And our questions are: How did they get here?
Are there stepping stones that we should be
protecting that bring biodiversity into Hawai'i?
And how long ago did it get there?
And the reason we want to look at that is,
if we're going to protect the biodiversity
of Hawai'i, we have to protect the origins
of that biodiversity. The ways that the biodiversity
gets here.
I work at Coconut Island at Hawaii Institute
of Marine Biology which is a marine lab for
the University of Hawai'i.
We use genetic technology to look at the natural
history of the animals, plants, and organisms
of the Pacific. We go into the DNA and we
can unravel their history.
The comparative reef research means that we
look at the reefs here in Hawaii and then
we look elsewhere in the Pacific.
One of the goals is that we can use pristine
reefs, reefs that are in almost perfect condition
elsewhere in the Pacific as a yardstick for
the recovery of Hawaiian reefs.
A second purpose is to look at those reefs
and determine whether they're contributing
the eggs and larvae that can replenish the
reefs and fisheries here in Hawai'i.
But the importance of the Cook Island's expedition
was that it just plain showed this was feasible.
That we could drop down in a fairly remote
location with specialized gear. That we could
get helium and other gases shipped there from
in this case California.
And so now, with that experience behind us
we can go forward and start looking at other
places that are important in terms of biodiversity
in the Pacific. We're hoping to go to the
Marshall Islands.
We're hoping to go Philippines and we're hoping
to the highest biodiversity hotspot
which is in Indonesia. A place called the
coral triangle.
It's the rainforest of sea and nobody has
looked down in the deep reefs to see whats
there.
So our next steps are to organize these expeditions
and to go forward and explore these places
that no human has ever seen.
What I love about the research I do is at
the beginning we have a team that goes out
very often to a place that no human beings
have ever seen.
And so it's the thrill of discovery. Seeing
something brand new, the privilege
is just fantastic.
And then after that theres months and months
of lab work mostly done by graduate students
and post-docs. There's months and months of
paper shuffling, reports and permits. But
then at the end of that, we discover something
no one else knows.
Something like the Opihi here in Hawai'i.
We discovered that they arrived here from
Japan two to three million years ago. That
they rafted over and at the end of every one
of these projects there's a special moment.
Where you know something that's important
that no one else knows and now you get to
go forward and tell the world.
The initial funding from the Seaver Institute
was the start up funding. Dr. Richard Pyle and I
had been trying for a better part of 10 years
to get somebody to believe in us. That we
can do this. Initially we weren't very successful.
But while we were trying the technology got
better and better and better. By the time
Victoria Seaver came and examined this project.
The technology was ready and she has a degree
in ocean engineering, she recognized that
this was feasible we could move forward and
that it was an important area of ocean exploration.
So really it was the Seaver Institution that
started it all. We're going forward with grants
to the National Science Foundation to the
National Geographic Society and hopefully
some private sources to augment the generosity
of the Seaver Institute. And the trust that
they put into us to get this going.
