Image of Mokumanamana (aka Necker Island) taken by Google Earth
Europa has been making good headway the last few days traveling between 1.5- 3 knots in swells up to 11 ft and wind gust up to 13 knots. As she approached and traveled just outside the 200’ contour line on the southwest side of Mokumanamana (map), humpback whale song chorusing increased dramatically.
Mokumanamana (Necker Island) is about 237 miles northwest of Nihoa Island. It is a small basalt island about 1.1 km long and 0.3 km wide and over 10 million years old.
Photo of Mokumanamana by: Kaleomanuiwa Wong, 2010
The Hawaiian name translates to island (moku) of exponential spiritual power (mana). Mokumanamana is shaped like a fish hook and the emergent land mass is all that remains of a shield volcano that may have once been as large as the island of O‘ahu. In 1786, less than a decade after English explorer Captain James Cook discovered Hawai’i for the Western world, explorer Jean-Francois de La Pérouse visited Mokumanamana and named it Necker Island after Jacques Necker. During the Hawaiian Kingdom era, Mokumanamana was annexed in 1894 by the Provisional Government of Hawai‘i.
Terrestrial animal life on Mokumanamana includes 16 species of nesting seabirds, land snails, wolf spiders, and 15 endemic insects. The island supports five native terrestrial plants, including three Hawaiian islands endemics.
Marine life includes gray reef sharks, manta rays and sixteen species of stony corals. Hawaiian monk seals are seen on the island's rocky shores. A great abundance and diversity of sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and lobsters are found in Shark Bay. Below the shallow reef are extensive deeper "shelves" that extend many miles from the island, especially to the southeast.
Photo of Hawaiian Monk Seal by: Mark Sullivan, NOAA Fisheries, 2007
The significance of Mokumanamana goes far beyond the plants and animals that inhabit the island and waters. This island is culturally significant for numerous reasons.
Mokumanamana is situated in an area known as Ke Alanui Polohiwa a Kāne, the great dark glistening sacred path of Kāne god of the sun, which coincides with the Tropic of Cancer. The Tropic of Cancer marks the northernmost extent that the sun travels annually and nowhere north of Mokumanamana can you observe the sun directly overhead. This boundary divides the Hawaiian archipelago into two regions which are Pō and Ao, or basically night and day. In the Hawaiian worldview, Pō is a place of darkness where gods and spirits dwell and Ao is the realm of light and mortality. Most of Papahānaumokuākea resides within Pō, while the inhabited Hawaiian Islands reside within Ao. According to Hawaiian belief, when spirits transition upon death, they travel from Ao in the east to Pō in the west. This is similar to the islands themselves who are volcanically born from the oceanic womb in the east where the sun rises and extends to the west where the sun sets and islands return to their source.
Mokumanamana was understood as a temple from which ancient Hawaiians were able to calibrate time and space through strict religious ceremonies that were performed during significant solar events such as the solstices and equinoxes. Ancestral Hawaiians lined the ridge of Mokumanamana with upright stones (manamana) that align with the path of the sun and other celestial bodies at specific times of the year. Archaeologists surveying Mokumanamana have documented over 52 religious shrines, cultural sites, and artifacts on the island. This is one of the highest concentrations of Native Hawaiian cultural sites in Hawaiʻi. Stone carvings called ki‘i, resembling humans, were found on the island and are unlike any found throughout Hawai‘i or Polynesia. They are part of this larger cultural landscape and the ceremonies associated with the region. Today, Hawaiian cultural researchers are using both Hawaiian and conventional research methods to revitalize these practices through ceremony and science.
Today Europa traces ancient voyaging canoe paths from Ao to Pō, traveling from east to west through Papahānaumokuākea. Still at the beginning of a long voyage, there is much left to explore.