President Creates World's Largest Marine Reserve

June 15, 2006 — -- The islands of northwestern Hawaii are so wild and so remote that even the most adventurous of us will likely never come close to them.

There are 7,000 different species catalogued there, a quarter of them found in no other place on earth. The volcanic islands on which they depend stretch 1,200 miles out into the Pacific, far beyond the major islands of Hawaii that most tourists visit.

"It is a spectacular place," said Joshua Reichert of the Pew Charitable Trusts, who fought for eight years to protect the region. "It's really like rolling Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon all into one."

Reichert said the archipelago was also in danger. Even though most of northwest Hawaii is uninhabited, a handful of fishing boats had nearly wiped out the lobster population -- which in turn was killing off the monk seals that fed on them.

"From an ocean perspective this is one of the crown jewels of the global marine environment," Reichert said. "This is an area that contains roughly 70 percent of the shallow water tropical coral reefs in U.S. waters."

But out of sight, out of mind.

Presidents as long ago as Theodore Roosevelt took steps to protect the area, but none of them spent very much political capital on it. President Bush, early in his first term, considered weakening some protections imposed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

Then he had a change of heart.

At a White House dinner in April, Jean-Michel Cousteau -- son of the famed explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau -- played "Voyage to Kure," a one-hour documentary he had made about the Hawaiian archipelago -- showing how sea birds were choking on debris that washed up from thousands of miles away.

In the film, Cousteau can be seen swimming in the abundant waters and walking on beaches covered with trash. He stops to pick some of it up for the camera.

"Here is a toothbrush," he says. "A lighter. Mascara."

"We have failed to make the link between the importance of the ocean and the quality of our lives," said Cousteau in an interview with ABC News.