Oct. 1, 1900: U.S. Navy Captain Charles F. Pond, Commander Pacific Reserve Squadron, reports on the "devastation wrought in the bird life of these (Midway) islands by Japanese."

Jan. 20, 1903: President Theodore Roosevelt signs executive order creating the Midway Islands Naval Reservation under control of the Navy Department.

June 3, 1903: Navy ship Iroquois arrives at Midway to evict Japanese seabird poachers; the superintendent of the Commercial Pacific Cable Co. is appointed custodian and justice of the peace to protect the birds.

May 2, 1904: Marine Corps detachment arrives to protect Midway and its residents.

Feb. 3, 1909: Roosevelt signs another executive order setting aside the islets and reefs of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as the Hawaiian Islands Reservation.

Feb. 20, 1936: Executive Order from President Franklin Roosevelt puts Kure (Ocean) Island under the control of the Navy.

July 1, 1939: Bureau of Biological Survey transfers to Department of the Interior. The bureau merges in 1940 with the Bureau of Fisheries into the Fish and Wildlife Service.

July 25, 1940: Roosevelt signs proclamation changing the names of certain federal wildlife refuges; Hawaiian Islands Reservation becomes Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge.

Nov. 17, 1952: Executive order by President Harry Truman "restores" Kure (Ocean) Island to the jurisdiction of the Territory of Hawai'i.

May 23, 1978: National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Hawai'i Department of Land and Natural Resources sign cooperative agreement for the "Survey and Assessment of the Living Resources on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands." Fisheries service assigned to implement the agreement and assess the offshore fisheries, Fish and Wildlife to study the marine mammals and birds, DLNR to assess the fisheries of the nearshore zone. Field research completed in 1982.

1979: Coast Guard decommissions their Loran Station on Tern Island (French Frigate Shoal). Fish and Wildlife Service establishes a field station there and officially takes over Loran Station in 1980.

Oct. 31, 1996: President Bill Clinton signs executive order that transfers administration of Midway from Navy to the Secretary of the Interior, to be administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service as Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

Dec. 7, 2000: The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve, about 1,200 nautical miles long and 100 wide and surrounding State of Hawai'i and National Wildlife Refuge waters, is created by Clinton through an executive order.

Jan. 18, 2001: Clinton signs executive order amending the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve "to ensure the comprehensive, strong, and lasting protection of the resources of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands."

Sept. 29, 2005: Gov. Linda Lingle signs regulations establishing all state waters in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a state marine refuge.

June 15, 2006: President George Bush establishes Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Advertiser research

THE NORTHWESTERN HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

NIHOA ISLAND

Other names: Bird Island, Moku Manu

Geography: Tallest of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.Distance from Honolulu: 280 miles

Highest point: 903 feet

Type of island: High island

Acreage dry land: 170 acres

Coral reefs within 13.8 miles: 140,554 acres

History: Well known to early Hawaiians, particularly those from Kaua'i and Ni'ihau. Nihoa is 150 miles and beyond view from Kaua'i. Extensively covered with Hawaiian-style prehistoric agricultural terraces and house sites, but was uninhabited at European contact.

Biology notes: Coastal scrub vegetation. The Nihoa fan palm, Pritchardia remota, is its only tree. Two endangered birds native to the island are the Nihoa millerbird and Nihoa finch. Six species of land snails are native here. Monk seals haul out on the rocky shore; sharks abound in nearshore waters.

MOKUMANAMANA ISLAND

Other names: Necker

Geography: Rocky island with steep sides, little soil

Distance from Honolulu: 460 miles

Highest point: 276 feet

Type of island: High island

Dry land: 46 acres

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 186,338 acres

History: Uninhabited at European contact. The island has little soil and few signs of long-term human habitation, but is covered with Polynesian shrines, leading some experts to surmise it was a sacred spot visited primarily for cultural ceremonies.

Biology notes: Only six species of plants on the rocky island. An active bird nesting site, particularly for species that prefer cliff sites, like white terns and black and blue-grey noddies. On the reef, coral diversity is fairly low because the reefs are exposed to rough surf.

FRENCH FRIGATE SHOALS

Other names: Mokupapapa

Geography: Largest atoll in the Hawaiian Islands, with 20-mile-long crescent-shaped reef, a dozen sand bars.

Distance from Honolulu: 560 miles

Highest point: 120 feet (La Perouse Pinnacle); sandbars to 6 feet

Type of island: Atoll, with one visible remnant of its volcanic origin, La Perouse Pinnacle.

Dry land: 67 acres

Coral reefs within 13.8 miles: 232,894 acres

History: During World War II, the U.S. military dredged a channel to one of the sand bars within French Frigate Shoals, and built up the sandbar with the dredged coral rubble. A runway was built for military aircraft, and the site was later a Coast Guard station. The Fish and Wildlife Service keeps a small staff on the island to oversee the birds, seals, turtles and other wildlife.

GARDNER PINNACLES

Other names: Puhahonu, Gardner Island

Geography: Two rock outcroppings are all that's left of a former volcanic island.

Distance from Honolulu: 690 miles

Highest point: 190 feet

Type of island: Remnant volcanic island

Acreage dry land: 5 acres

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 291,056 acres

History: Whaling captain Joseph Allen in 1820 sighted the rocks, which at that time were not found on Western charts.

Biology notes: Gardner has more species of fish along its undersea shelves than are found at the larger rocky islands of Nihoa and Mokumanamana, and has one of the highest diversities of marine life in the entire Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It's not the same for plants, however; only a single species, a purslane, clings to its rocks.

MARO REEF

Other names: Nalukakala

Geography: A complex of reefs running northwest to southeast.

Distance from Honolulu: 850 miles

Highest point: awash

Type of island: Reef region

Acreage dry land: 1 acre, sometimes

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 316,812 acres

History: Discovered in 1820 by the crew of the ship Maro. Ships tend to avoid it because of the danger of being wrecked, and scientists have had problems trying to study it because it is so difficult to get to and through the reef.

Biology notes: Maro, the largest coral reef in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, has more kinds of coral than any other of the chain's reefs and islands. Scientists in 2000 and 2001 counted 37 species of stony corals here.

LAYSAN ISLAND

Other names: Kauo, Moller Island

Geography: The largest island in the area after Midway's Sand Island, with a large salt lake in the middle.

Distance from Honolulu: 940 miles

Highest point: 40 feet

Type of island: Coral island

Acreage dry land: 1,015

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 145,334 acres

History: Extensively mined during the late 1800s for guano, the dried bird droppings that made a fine fertilizer. Feather collectors killed birds by the hundreds of thousands during the period. Rabbits released in 1903 ate the island's plants, driving to extinction several species of land birds that relied on them. Rabbits, rats and weeds have been removed.

Biology notes: Home to two endangered native land birds, the Laysan finch and Laysan duck. A lake in the middle of the island is super-salty.

LISIANSKI ISLAND

Other names: Papa'apoho

Geography: Low coral island, accompanied to the south by Neva Shoal

Distance from Honolulu: 1,065 miles

Highest point: 40 feet

Type of island: Coral island

Acreage dry land: 381 acres

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 298,581 miles

History: Discovered in 1805, when Russian captain Yurii Lisianski went aground, twice, on the reefs south of the island. He gave the reef the name of Lisianski's ship, the Neva. Lisianski was covered with vegetation in the 1800s. Rabbits were introduced, perhaps from Laysan, in early 1900s, and by the 1920s, they had eaten nearly every plant and, on running out of food, themselves died out.

Biology notes: Lisianski lacks a perimeter reef. Most coral growth is on nearby Neva Shoal, which divers have described as a coral garden.

PEARL AND HERMES ATOLL

Other names: Holoikauaua

Geography: An oval reef with several internal reefs and seven sandbar/islands

Distance from Honolulu: 1,210 miles

Highest point: 10 feet, sometimes awash

Type of island: Atoll

Acreage dry land: 80 acres

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 193,834 acres

History: Discovered in 1822 when the whaling ships Pearl and Hermes went aground. The whalers built another boat out of the lumber from the wrecks and sailed it to Honolulu. A century later, pearl oysters were found, and a brief industry developed, with Filipino divers collecting tons of shell that were sold to button manufacturers on the Mainland. The pearl oyster population never recovered.

Biology notes: Laysan finches were translocated here in the 1960s and continue to survive.

MIDWAY ATOLL

Other names: Brook Island, Middlebrook Islands, Pihemanu

Geography: Two large and one small coral island inside a roughly circular reef.

Distance from Honolulu: 1,310 miles

Highest point: 12 feet

Type of island: Atoll

Acreage dry land: 1,550 acres

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 88,457 acres

History: Capt. N.B. Brooks sighted the island in 1859 aboard the Honolulu ship Gambia, and claimed it for the United States. A transpacific cable station was established here in the early 1900s, and Pan American Airways put in a mid-Pacific stop here in 1935. The islands are best known as the site of the battle that turned World War II in the Pacific to the allied forces.
Biology notes: Midway hosts the largest breeding population of Laysan albatross in the world and the second-largest population of black-footed albatross.

KURE ATOLL

Other names: Kanemiloha'i, Ocean Island, Cure.

Geography: Northwesternmost of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Lagoon forms a near-circle

Distance from Honolulu: 1,380 miles

Highest point: 20 feet

Type of island: Atoll — the northernmost atoll in the world

Acreage dry land: 320 acres (Green Island only. Neighboring Sand Island comes and goes)

Coral reef within 13.8 miles: 79,972 acres

History: Site of several shipwrecks in 1800s. U.S. Navy built tall radar reflector in 1955. Coast Guard navigation radio station operated from 1960 to 1992, when Green Island runway was allowed to be overgrown. Unlike all the other Northwestern Islands, which are under federal control, Kure is a state wildlife sanctuary.