Papahanaumokuakea: Hawaii's new UNESCO site a marine wonderland
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Most of the remaining population of Hawaiian monk seals -- an estimated 1,200 -- live in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where their habitat has been protected since 1988. Still, their numbers continue to decline as many juvenile seals fail to thrive, other individuals fall prey to sharks and some get entangled in discarded nets and other debris.

Photo: James Watt / PMNM

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Most of the remaining population of Hawaiian monk seals -- an estimated 1,200 -- live in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where their habitat has been protected since 1988. Still, their numbers continue to decline as many juvenile seals fail to thrive, other individuals fall prey to sharks and some get entangled in discarded nets and other debris.
The westernmost landfall in the Hawaiian archipelago, Kure Atoll lies 1,200 miles northwest of Honolulu, and has been the site of many shipwrecks over the years. Like most of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, it's uninhabited, though occasionally visited by scientists and researchers.
A school of Hawaiian squirrelfish inhabit a reef in French Frigate Shoals, part of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument -- the newly designated World Heritage Site in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The largest of their kind, masked boobies nest on Tern Island in French Frigate Shoals and Midway Atoll in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Other species of booby found in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands include red-footed, blue-footed and brown. To see more birds of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, go to http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hawaii/detail?&entry_id=69343.
Tons of abandoned nets, fishing lines and other debris drift into the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument every year, threatening wildlife and damaging coral.
The barren rocks of the Gardner Pinnacles, in the middle of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, are surrounded by a reef home to diverse species of fish and coral.
Sharks and other large predatory fishes are particularly abundant throughout the reefs of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, considered one of the few remaining "top predator-dominated" ecosystems left in the world's oceans.
Rapture Reef in French Frigate Shoals, part of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, teems with brightly hued creatures including pennantfish, pyramid and milletseed butterflyfish.
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