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Hi, I'm George Page for Nature.
And here in Hawaii, there are more than 6,000 species of plants, animals and insects
found only in the Hawaiian Islands.
In fact, Hawaii ranks number one in the world for its number of native species.
And that's because of its extreme isolation,
2,500 miles from the nearest continental land mass.
Here, plants and animals simply evolved in their own special ways over millions of years
without outside influences or disturbances,
until about 1,300 years ago when man arrived,
Hawaii's first settlers, the Polynesians.
This time on nature, we celebrate the flora and fauna of our 50th state,
which Mark Twain called the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean.
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Hawaii was born from the fiery womb of the sea.
Out of the dark underworld emerged the land, creatures, a string of islands.
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The steep slopes of Kauai, one of the islands in the great Hawaiian chain,
stretching 1,600 miles across the middle of the world's deepest ocean, the Pacific.
These great volcanic mountains form the most isolated land mass in the world.
The island of Hawaii is the tallest, most massive mountain on earth, and it's still growing.
The distance from this ice cap summit to the seabed is more than five miles.
On the neighboring island of Maui is the extinct crater Haleakala.
According to the
the Hawaiian's powerful goddess of fire, the great mountain of the Pacific,
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And this is where the fire goddess now resides, beneath Kīlauea volcano.
A lake of lava, its surface has cooled and is crusted over.
Jagged lines of fire divided into plates.
Just as these surfaces move, the Hawaiian islands move, together on great tectonic
plates. Moving four inches a year to the northwest, the plates pass over a
stationary hot spot beneath the planet's crust, where the earth's molten core
rushes through, bursting into the deep sea, piling up to the surface and finally
emerging into the air. And that makes land, and so Hawaii grows.
Hawaiian lava, called Pahoehoe, is liquid, almost as fluid as water, and whenever
there is a new surge from below, the lava lake wells up and breaks its banks,
pouring molten stone down the mountainside like a fast-flowing river.
The farther the lava flows from its wellspring, the cooler it becomes, getting
slower and more sluggish.
Trapped gases explode to freedom, Pele's curses, the Hawaiians believed.
A provider and a destroyer. To the Hawaiians, Pele was a fearsome and
untamable spirit, with extraordinary powers over the living and the dead. They
cowered beneath her wrath. According to legend, as she leaves a simmering island
behind her, Pele explodes into each new one, creating it, laying it waste,
enlarging it, letting it live. Tree molds, the stark remains of a once thriving
forest, or in Hawaiian legend, the remains of people who had angered Pele.
Vegetation soon recolonizes the cooled lava flows, providing food for the nene
goose of the volcanoes, which lives here and nowhere else on earth.
In this primeval landscape, destruction is a constant threat.
Just beneath the surface, a labyrinth of tubes and caverns permeate the islands.
Ancient Hawaiians sheltered here.
But these caves were sculpted by lava. The ridges were formed from lava that cooled
and stuck to the walls. The floor is lava that simply stopped flowing. The entire
cavern systems were once great pipes of rushing magma. The people buried their
dead here and left records of their chiefs, gods, and ancestors engraved on
the walls. On Hawaii, the tubes are still being created. As Pahoehoe flows, the
molten rock cools and hardens on the outside. This insulates the inside and
allows the central lava to keep rushing through, fast and hot at temperatures of
2,000 degrees. At first, the surface of the piping is brittle and often breaks,
making a skylight and allowing a privileged view of world creation at
work. Above the network of tubes and connected to them are water-filled
depressions. Half the water is fresh rain from the mountainside, half sea water
that seeps in on the tide through lava tubes and fissures. These ponds have
their own exclusive wildlife, dominated by tiny shrimps, which team in the
millions, a subterranean community thriving under the volcano.
The edges of these ponds are a favorite haunt of Hawaiian stilts, which come here
to reap the rich harvest of shrimp. There are now only 2,000 of the birds left
living in the wild. Like most Hawaiian birds, their future is threatened as more
of their habitat is invaded by man. The wandering tattler is also a regular
visitor to the lava ponds. Like the original Hawaiian voyagers, the tattler
is a great traveler and navigator. Once a tattler banded 3,000 miles away in
Alaska was found four days later in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
Many ponds and flooded lava tubes are tidal and lead directly to the
surrounding ocean, whose salty fingers penetrate deep beneath the volcano.
Nearer the sea, the increasing saltiness of the water and the tunnels allows
marine creatures like these soldier fish to find a home. The Hawaiians had many
gods and many stories about the origins of their people and the creatures which
shared their world. One account of the creation of the animal world begins on
the reef where corals became worms which turned into fish and from which
eventually arose man.
The edges of Hawaii's islands are steep and constantly swept by powerful waves.
Incredibly, some fish spend their entire lives in the surge zone of these
turbulent cliffs.
The reef is the other half of island making. The volcano goddess lays the lava
and corals build upon it. Plankton and other creatures eventually come to the
reef from the surrounding ocean, settle and multiply. Long before modern science
became interested in the function of a species, legend says the god Kumu Honua
gathered all the fishes of the reef together and gave each a duty. He
distinguished them with colors and markings.
To the Moorish idol, he gave bold stripes.
To the Saddleback wrasse, blue, red and green.
To the Yellowtailed wrasse, a flashy tail. The Achilles tang received bright
orange spots. And when the brilliant colors were all assigned, the fish that
still had no marks, he sprinkled with ashes.
And one he made the master of disguise, Paki'i, the flatfish.
O'ili uvi'vi, the filefish, in its back-to-front posture, perhaps a courting
display. As twilight approaches, many reef fish come together in preparation for
spawning.
It's a time of intense social activity and of danger.
Puhi paka, the Moray eel. Hawaiian fishermen find it difficult and
dangerous to drag him out of his hole. He will defend himself aggressively, taking
a finger or toe if he can. Wherever the eel lives, they say, there will be few
small fish around. But amazingly, some have tricks up their sleeves.
The puffer fish lives up to its name.
In the Hawaiian creation story, there is one animal in the ocean that in its
world is an evolutionary climax. Kamaloa, the octopus. Octopuses have complex
brains and a wit that no mere Puhi paka can match. The octopus wants the eel's
lair.
Out of reach of the eel, under a lava ledge, a male Sergeant Major fish tends
and guards eggs. A filefish is attracted to the banquet of purple caviar.
The Sergeant Major takes his sentry duties seriously. His diligence is more
than a match for the persistent filefish.
Several females have laid eggs on the rock and he is father to them all. But
the defender cannot be everywhere at once and the eggs have many predators. A
shrimp sneaks in to gorge itself on the free feast.
The reason so many eggs hatch is due to the unflagging devotion of the male
Sergeant Major. He must stand guard against all comers.
Many of the reef's residents are at their most active in the period just
before darkness. The octopus, like many other reef dwellers, mates in this
twilight hour. The male has a special tentacle with which he inserts a packet
of sperm into an opening in the females body. During mating she can swim along
pulling the obliging male with her. Sometimes the tip of the male's arm
breaks off and for many years scientists thought they were finding some kind of
parasitic worm inside female octopuses.
Night approaches. Other fish gather to spawn. Unlike the octopus's direct
coupling or the Sergeant Major's stern husbandry, fish like the yellow tang have
a mating method that relies on a scattered buckshot approach. First they
make their way to a traditional spawning place deep at the reef's edge where
offshore currents are strong.
At the spawning site their agitation increases until one by one the females
begin to dart towards the surface releasing a puff of eggs. Instantly males
follow and shoot their sperm over the eggs. The fertilized eggs unattended
drift out to sea and become part of the strange and beautiful world of plankton.
At night the fragile planktonic creatures migrate to surface waters. In
the moonlight these translucent specters pulse and glow like alien spaceships.
A gelatinous tenofor dangles its long tentacles as lures to catch tiny
larval fish. The movements of this drifting community are controlled by the
ocean currents. Many of these delicate animals have floated vast distances
before reaching the underwater slopes of the great Hawaiian volcanoes. Indeed
this is how the fish and coral that built the Hawaiian reefs arrived here
originally. A successful catch for one ghostly angler.
A larval moray eel. One result of a tang spawning at the reef's edge. This young
fish will soon leave the plankton and settle on the reef. A seahorse hitches a
ride on a raft of seaweed. Sharing this floating platform is a paper nautilus or
argonaut. One of the loveliest and rarest members of the octopus family. The fragile
shells secreted by the female acts as a nursery. The eggs are kept inside and
tended until they hatch. When ready the minute hatchlings are gently ejected
into the sea to ride with the rest of the plankton.
For this manta ray more than 10 feet wide the plankton clouds are like living
soup and it flies through them scooping in huge mouthfuls. Indeed the Hawaiians
named the ray Lupe the same as the word for kite.
The volcano forms a base for the reef and the life around it but that which
Pele creates she reserves the right to destroy. Now and then under her lava pool
on Kilauea Pele gives an extra push and the river of lava reaches the sea.
In Hawaii the business of world creation and destruction go hand in hand. As night
follows day, decade after decade, millennium after millennium, the lava
flows burn and ravage yet also build up the land. The trees have evolved in the
precarious shadow of the volcano. The devastation will soon be replaced by a
new forest. The elemental struggle between fire and water has been fought
wherever volcanoes exist near the sea. In this cataclysmic battle there are no
victors. Any temporary gains made by the volcano are eventually swamped by the
sea in a never-ending cycle of violent upheaval and quiescence.
As the vanguard of lava pushes into the sea extending the island it piles up on
itself and crusts over. The surface calm camouflages the incredible drama being
performed below the waves.
Each fire-filled lava bomb explodes as the superheated gases in its core
encounter the cold and suffocating liquid which tries to drown it.
Huge areas of reef are killed but this virgin substrate will be prime real
estate for the drifting planktonic settlers. Fish that fled for the duration
of the catastrophe return to find an underwater desert where only oases of
coral remain.
The surge zone has changed. A once thriving community is buried by lava
rubble. In the wave action the boulders crumble into pebbles and the pebbles
into sand.
A shore the volcanic sand is piled up by the surf forming black beaches. Over long
periods of time new land has risen from the ocean and made a chain of isolated
worlds. The island of Kauai stands at the western end of the stretch of high
islands. It's five million years old ten times as old as the big island of Hawaii.
It has been a long time since Pele lived here and Kauai's volcanoes have long
been dead. In the meantime these islands have come to support unique rainforests.
Home to some of the world's rarest and most unusual birds. The crested honey
creeper only a few hundred are known to exist feeding on nectar in remote
valleys of Maui.
The moisture laden trade winds bring rain to the mountain peaks nourishing
the forest. Rainfall in Kauai's alakai swamp is some 50 feet a year. It's the
wettest land on the planet.
The lava which brought destruction has built the island. The water which brings
life wears it away. Over millions of years the older hillsides become steep
and gullied with razor-sharp ridges, great valleys and canyons.
Spr Dennie today holds the oldest lake on Kauai Island.
Over Kauai,
far-ranging frigate birds pass westward on a journey of hundreds of miles back to their
nesting grounds.
La Perouse Pinnacle, one day even the big island of Hawaii will be worn down to a stump
like this, eventually vanishing beneath the sea.
At French frigate Shoals, the original high island has eroded and sunk below the surface,
its edges outlined by a growing coral reef.
It's 10 million years old and now has moved 800 miles away from the hot spot.
For a thousand miles westward, a chain of atolls dot the Pacific, each one perched on
a sunken volcano.
Laysan Island, it's surrounded by rich sea life and is a breeding site for vast numbers
of seabirds.
Frigate birds are aerial pirates and believe in molest chicks of their own kind.
They turn nests in a way which is as uncomplicated as their beauty.
They don't use a nest at all.
The egg is laid on the fork of a bare branch and when the chick hatches, it perches, waiting
patiently to be fed until it's ready to fly in about 40 days.
The chick has a gargantuan appetite and this is just one of many meals a day.
The most abundant birds on Laysan and perhaps the commonest in the entire Pacific are the
sooty terns.
And a million of them breed here.
With these huge numbers, globules over space and mates are inevitable.
Breeding is not always a delicate affair.
A female without a mate to protect her can be overwhelmed by an unruly mob of sooters.
The sooty tern chick hatches from an egg laid on the bare ground.
Its egg shell is tough, like those of many shorebirds, to protect it out in the open.
It may take the hatchling, even with outside help, days to break out.
Most seabird chicks are well developed when they hatch and can move if they have to, but
they still need protection from aerial attackers.
But life in a crowded seabird colony is mainly a matter of watching out for the neighbors,
including the benign but heavy-footed albatross.
Some of the local residents are not as innocent as they look.
The Laysan finch, one of the Hawaiian honeycreepers, has come a long way from its ancestors, which
fed on nectar.
Its beak is sturdy and built for cracking seeds.
But evolution has had a long time to work on the behavior of this remote population,
and the finch has developed a more sinister talent.
Like miniature vultures, they scavenge any broken seabird eggs.
This finch has turned carnivorous, fulfilling a role usually occupied by much larger birds.
A turn injured in a fight may die.
The finches will wait.
They eat the carcasses of dead birds.
An unattended egg soon attracts finches, which can easily puncture the shell with their tough
beaks.
Too late, the parent returns to confront the determined pack of raiders.
Clumsy on the ground, the red-tailed tropic bird is an elegant flier.
Tropic bird pairs perform an acrobatic courtship display.
Both birds fly in backward loops, cartwheeling in the air.
These birds fly over vast distances, and legend says they helped lead those other skillful
navigators, the Polynesians, to discover Hawaii in the 10th century.
A sure, tropic birds like to sit tight, but another resident has evolved habits to take
advantage of the particular abundance here.
The Laysan teal feeds on the flies that carpet the shore of the duck's only habitat, Laysan
Lagoon.
Their technique is to stamp through the swarms, stirring them up, and then snap at random,
snatching a meal of buzzing bodies.
In 1911, only six teals remained.
Now protected, the population has built up to an estimated 300, but it is still one of
the rarest ducks in the world.
The Laysan albatross is a far-flying migrant that returns here each year to mate, or to
practice mating.
These have been known to court without actually mating for five years.
They mate once a month.
Whenever Kane, the principal Hawaiian god, came to earth, it was as an albatross.
The monk seal, another Hawaiian animal that was almost wiped out by hunters and habitat
loss has been brought back from the verge of extinction.
The seals spend much of their time at sea feeding.
When they come ashore, it's to sleep or to fight.
These males are battling for the favors of a female who lies dozing on the beach.
Though its numbers are slowly increasing, there are only about 1,000 Hawaiian monk seals
in the wild.
Sensitive to the presence of people, they require remote uninhabited areas.
But such isolation is becoming harder to find.
Of the world's two other monk seal species, the Mediterranean population is down to a
few hundred and the Caribbean seal is now extinct.
With recovery efforts underway, the seals now have only one creature to fear.
These are all pregnant gray reef sharks.
Each year, masses of these sharks come together in the shallows off the low islands.
They are ready to give birth to their live born offspring.
But why they gather like this remains a mystery.
Of all the images in Hawaiian legend, only the volcano is more powerful than the shark.
To the early Hawaiians, the shark, like the volcano, was a power of both destruction and
new life.
The shark was a symbol of fertility, a barren woman who was visited in a dream by one would
give birth to a child with magical properties.
The shark is also the final repository for the soul, the ultimate incarnation.
The shark was Pele's brother, Kamoho Ali, who keeps the water of life and lives at the
far eastern edge of the world where the sun rises.
It was Kamoho Ali who gave Pele the power to escape from the goddess of the sea.
She is still escaping.
East of the island of Hawaii and still 3,000 feet under the water, a new island is emerging.
Loihi, the latest outpouring through the hot spot from the center of the earth.
One day Loihi will be a great island, a new world, and Pele will live here and throw fire,
destroy and build, lay waste and bring new life.
Loihi, the latest outpouring through the hot spot from the center of the earth.
In a single film, we could not possibly do justice to Hawaii
as one of America's and the world's greatest natural treasures
or to the appalling rate of species extinction that's occurring here.
We'll come back to Hawaii in the future to tell more of the story.
In the meantime, let's hope the terribly important efforts of the Nature Conservancy and others
to save Hawaii's natural bounty for future generations are successful.
I'm George Page for Nature.
Nature is made possible by public television stations, by Siemens, a leader in high technology
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