Malia Chow

Malia Chow was born and raised in Hawaii and, like so many people before her and since, launched her career on the mainland before finding her way back to the islands. She always had a head for science but at one point of her postdoctoral studies, the molecular biologist took a turn toward the sea.

Her years with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) led to her current post as superintendent for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, a realm that’s been in flux lately. For starters, about a year ago the agency’s myriad divisions here relocated to the brand-new NOAA Inouye Regional Center on Ford Island. It’s a change from Chow’s former office overlooking Maunalua Bay.

"I used to see the whales breaching in Hawaii Kai, but now I see the submarines popping up and popping down," said Chow, 55. "It’s a different view, but it’s still an ocean view."

Further, changes are in play for the whales that Chow concerns herself with every day. At the same time that her office is exploring ways to expand the protections offered by the sanctuary, another branch of NOAA is taking testimony on proposals to remove humpbacks from the endangered species list. She’s recently back from a statewide series of hearings on the proposal (comments are being taken through June 19 — details at hawaiihumpbackwhale.noaa.gov).

Family is partly what brought her back to Hawaii, where her kin go back 10 generations. Chow is married and, though she has no kids, there are two dogs at home in Kaneohe, four sisters and a brother and all her nieces and nephews.

After graduating from Maryknoll School, she studied at Gonzaga University and University of Washington; she earned her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Hawaii she found when she returned as a University of Hawaii’s Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology researcher was under increasing environmental stress. But more recently, Chow said, there have been positive developments, too.

"In the 10 years or so that I’ve been in this field, working for NOAA, I’ve seen a huge shift towards people wanting to be more involved and concerned," she said. "They’re stepping up in a way I’ve never seen before in Hawaii."

Question: What was the feedback from the public hearings on the sanctuary proposal?

Answer: What we’ve learned is that communities across the state have very different concerns and different wishes. A lot of them are trying to understand what does it mean for an entity like a National Marine Fisheries Sanctuary to come in, but they forget that we’ve been around for 20 years. We already co-manage these waters with the state of Hawaii. In part it was trying to get the right word out about how this proposal could be expanding the sanctuary.

Q: So their initial reaction was one of concern?

A: I think it depends. We tried to get as many different voices out as possible. We had a lot of interest from Molokai and Lanai and the North Shore of Oahu. We went to communities for the most part that are adjacent to sanctuary waters. …

Just thinking about this proposal, I think that we’ve been around for the last two decades as the whale sanctuary. We started a process in 2002 and did ask the question, “What more could the sanctuary do?” when we were established by Congress. They put language in there that basically said, “At some point in the future you should consider adding additional natural and cultural resources.”

There’s a long history to how we got to where we are. But this is not something that we made up; it’s something that we’re required to do by law.

So we went out in 2010 and said, “What do people think?” and we get a whole range of concerns … that people feel about the oceans. So we used that to develop a proposal, which we just released to the public.

Around the same time, the delisting was being discussed. That began a very interesting conversation for us.

Q: Wasn’t that an odd juxtaposition?

A: Well, I think it’s really important to understand that humpback whales will continue to be protected under our proposal. Even if they are delisted outside of sanctuary waters, they’ll remain protected.

So we feel, that based on the numbers, that whales continue to need to be protected and, more importantly, that people need to be safe, and operate around the whales. So it’s a management issue — more than ever there needs to be management around humpback whales. …

Q: What were some of the concerns raised?

A: There’s a lot of misunderstanding of what we’re trying to do. There’s concern that we’re preventing access. There’s concern that we’re regulating fishing. And I try to remind people that … the reason Congress created the National Marine Sanctuaries Act was the result of this huge oil spill off the coast of California. And the state government could not handle it.

So basically the act says, we need to identify special places in the ocean that should be set aside, so that people could continue to recreate and use the ocean. What sanctuaries really have in place are, often, prohibition against deep-sea mining, sometimes oil and gas. These are the big issues that Congress understood we need to have some protection in place.

There’s also a provision that says we need to manage multiple uses. We need to facilitate all public and private uses. …

I think people, like in most places of the country, are deeply connected to the ocean here. There’s a dependence. They play and work, and they want to make sure that nothing we’re proposing takes away their ability to do that.

Nothing in our proposal takes away people’s right to access the ocean. In fact, we’re promoting making sure people can be in the ocean — but an ocean that’s healthy.

So the question we’re asking is: With all the new and emerging issues since the sanctuaries were created two decades ago, how can a National Marine Sanctuary, in partnership with the state of Hawaii, help to address some of these issues? …

These resources are held in public trust for the people of Hawaii. It’s not owned by the federal government, it’s not owned by the state; it’s public trust for the people. So how do we bring all the tools available to make sure that these resources can be protected for people in the future? …

Q: What’s the difference in approach between the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands marine monument and the sanctuary?

A: The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was established as a marine national monument by President (George W.) Bush, using an authority called the Antiquities Act — very different from the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. The president basically created a place where everything is prohibited, except that which is allowed by a permit.

Sanctuaries have everything that is allowed, except the very specific things that are prohibited, which is what we’re proposing. We have a few things (for which) we are trying to put protections in place, which is a very different model.

Q: What are the priority areas for protection?

A: What we’ve heard consistently from every island is a concern about water quality. As a National Marine Sanctuary that was only protecting humpback whales, we were very limited with what we could do about water quality, because humpback whales don’t feed in Hawaii, so they really aren’t impacted by an unhealthy ocean in Hawaii.

Moving forward, if we shift from protecting more things, we are saying that we would put water quality as a high priority, that for the areas within the boundaries we would try to put programs on the ground to improve water quality. A lot of what we do is through citizen science, trying to get communities engaged.

For the most part we’ve tried to create a proposal that meets communities halfway, by listening and understanding all the different perspectives. …

Q: You talked about your family’s long history in Hawaii. Are you part Hawaiian, yourself?

A: Yeah. My mom was constantly reminding me of what our ancestors were, and our deep connections to place, and how maybe some of the work I’m doing is carrying on some of that tradition. I do feel there is a purpose and a need for me to be working in Hawaii.

Q: A personal tie?

A: A responsibility, right? A lot of people who leave, it’s hard to come back, right? But I think that at the end of the day, it’s such a connectedness to place, that you’d like to take the skills that you’ve learned, and be able to apply them in a place that’s meaningful.

Q: Do you feel hopeful about this place?

A: You have to be an optimist in this world.

Q: What are you worried about here, that you see?

A: I guess because of my background as a scientist, I recognize that there are signs of maybe a tipping point within the ocean. And there’s a lot of work being done to better understand tipping points — and we’re involved in one of the projects — that things don’t just decline at a slow rate, that actually you could hit a point where there’s kind of a point of no return. …

I think our ocean’s under a lot of stress. … Scientists are beginning to document what’s happening. So I think there is a responsibility to manage in a way that can adapt and keep the ocean healthy enough so we can continue to fish and access it and play on it.

There is a sense of urgency, I feel, in trying to bring this information to communities, so they can understand and be part of it.

Q: Don’t a lot of people feel that it’s all beyond our control to change?

A: Doesn’t it feel huge, like it’s happening out there, and big policies that have nothing to do with us? But what we as managers can do is manage at a very local level. If you can manage the local impacts, then you’ve got more of a buffer and a resilience when some of the larger, global impacts occur.

And I think some of the best resources in all the oceans occur here in the Pacific, so we have a lot that we want to protect. I think that collectively people are saying, “What can we do to protect Hawaiian waters, but maintaining people’s ability to recreate?”