Research traces lineage of sea life to Hawaii waters

Scientists typically view Hawaii’s lush, underwater environment as both an ecological treasure trove and a dead end.

It’s considered a remote oasis in the middle of the Pacific whose unique marine species never branch out anywhere else.

However, new peer-reviewed research published this month from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology challenges that idea.

In the June edition of the biology journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, UH researchers announce they’ve found coral-dwelling species of fish and sea cucumbers across the ocean whose lineage can be traced back to the Hawaiian Islands through genetic tests and sampling.

"The surprise was, we looked at some of these organisms, and their ancestors are from Hawaii," said Brian Bowen, a professor at the university’s marine biology institute. "For the most part people have regarded Hawaii as a closed system. This surprise shows that the health of Hawaii’s ecosystems matter to everyone."

The report, he says, supports earlier findings that some sea turtle species abroad originally branched out from nests in Hawaii.

For the latest study, ateam of about a dozen graduate students and postdoctorate researchers from UH and the private San Francisco-based California Academy of Sciences examined marine life far west of Hawaii, near Japan; and to the south, near the Johnston Atoll and Line Islands, Bowen said.

The discovery that the Hawaiian Islands are "radiating" their unique marine biodiversity back out into the ocean’s larger coral networks — not just hoarding it locally — could give extra weight to protecting the remote region’s coral habitats, Bowen and others say.

It also lends urgency to stopping the mysterious bacterial disease that has killed large swathes of coral on Kauai’s North Shore at a worrisome pace in recent years, Bowen said. Federal biologists, who examined the problems on Kauai last month, plan to update the public soon on what they’ve found.

During the past six years, the UH-based team looked at 25 marine species, examining them in distant waters around the Pacific and back in the laboratory, Bowen said. They found five species with genetic ancestry stemming from Hawaii: the yellow tang, ember parrotfish, bullethead parrotfish, Hawaiian pink snapper (also known by its Hawaiian name, opakapaka) and lollyfish sea cucumber (or loli).

Trends in Ecology and Evolution had the UH research peer-reviewed by the journal’s own list of experts in February, Bowen said.

The findings, he added, bolstered his studies in the early 1990s that linked eastern Pacific green sea turtles to ancestors that had nested in Hawaii.

"That was the first hint and that was 20 years ago," he said.

In 2006 federal officials created the Papahanau­mokuakea Marine Monument, protecting 139,797 square miles stretching northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands from fishing, direct pollution and other human effects in an area larger than all of the U.S. national parks combined, according to the monument’s website.

"It adds a whole new dimension to the reasons to protect the monument," Bowen said Thursday. "Nobody had dreamed of that when they created (it)."

Efforts to help marine life at Papahanaumokuakea date back to 1909, when then-President Theodore Roosevelt sent troops to protect the archipelago’s bird species from being wiped out by feather hunters, said Andy Collins, the monument’s education coordinator. Since then federal agencies have gradually buttressed the protections there with stronger designations, he said.

The latest research showing some of Papahanaumokuakea’s marine life feeds into the oceans’ larger systems is "critically important," Collins said. The findings could influence what research projects local biologists do, including those at the monument, which is managed by seven different state and federal agencies, he said.

UH’s findings could also boost the significance of other remote island chains and ring-shaped atoll coral reefs scattered across the oceans, Collins added.

The UH study shows Hawaii sending distinct marine species westward toward the "Coral Triangle," a hot spot between New Guinea, the Philippines and Indonesia which is recognized as "the pinnacle of marine biodiversity," Bowen said. That system is one of the oceans’ most important engines generating marine life, including the seafood caught all over the world, he added.

The UH Institute of Marine Biology plans to expand its research on species origins to include marine mammals such as dolphins, Bowen said.

"In order to solve this definitively, we want to get up to 50 species" traced back to Hawaii, he said. "The fact that it’s published now means it’s real."