Web site explores Palmyra
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer
A group of photographers, videographers, writers and naturalists has descended on Palmyra Atoll and, starting tomorrow, will produce a unique Internet experience as they conduct a weeklong investigation.
The group is OneWorldJourneys, and it is following a pattern it has developed in a short series of stunning photo/video/text Internet forays into the natural worlds of diverse parts of the planet. They've gone in search of jaguars in the Mexican forests, explored the Sonoran desert, and ventured into the former Soviet republic of Georgia and its Caucasus mountains.
At Palmyra, the group will team up with the Nature Conservancy, which bought the island last year from the Fullard-Leo family of Honolulu. The Fish and Wildlife Service plans to purchase from the conservancy two-thirds of the dry land and all of the reef for a national wildlife refuge.
It is Palmyra's unique natural features that attracted OneWorldJourneys, said Kevin Sparkman, one of its founders.
The Palmyra team includes writers Terry Tempest Williams and her husband, Brooke Williams, wilderness photographer Jeff Foott, videographer Franklin Viola, field producer Russell Sparkman, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, field technician Michael Zilber, biologist Daria Siciliano and Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Jim Maragos.
Considerable preliminary work has been done, and the Web site for the Palmyra venture, a stunning visual display, is already open at www.oneworldjourneys.com. Just follow the Palmyra links.
Palmyra is a remarkable chunk of coral about 1,000 miles south of Honolulu, just 300 miles north of the equator. It is roughly five miles long, lying east to west, and just two miles across from south to north. There are just 680 acres of dry land. Palmyra lies in the intertropical convergence zone, a region of heavy rain, and gets about 175 inches of rain annually.
The reefs include a wide assortment of marine life. The Nature Conservancy estimates it has three times the number of species of coral found in Hawai'i.
The land is a classic and now rare tropical rain forest, dominated by the tree Pisonia grandis, found only on wet atolls. It is home to hundreds of thousands of seabirds, which range the Pacific for food but use the little islets of Palmyra as nesting sites. Palmyra's red-footed booby population is the second largest in the world after the Galapagos.
OneWorldJourneys will use daily satellite transmissions to send underwater photography and audio and video information on its Palmyra explorations. The OneWorldJourneys folks hail from Whidbey Island, Wash. The program is produced by FusionSpark Media and co-sponsored by Seiko Epson Corp.
Jan TenBruggencate is The Advertiser's Kaua'i bureau chief and its science and environment writer. Call him at (808) 245-3074 or e-mail jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.
