EDITORIAL
'Heartbreaking' trash in Northwest Islands

It's obviously not the kind of TV exposure the marketing arms of the Hawai'i Tourism Authority are looking for: Explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau is filming a television documentary about the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the tons of garbage that have accumulated on these otherwise clean shores.

Never mind that few tourists will ever venture to Midway Island, French Frigate Shoals, Laysan Island, Gardner Pinnacles or Maro Reef, where Cousteau is filming, or that much of the debris has drifted to these jewels of the Pacific, not just from the populated Hawaiian Islands, but from all over the world. "It's not just one nation in particular," Cousteau says. "It's everybody."

That doesn't excuse the condition of these islands, choked with hundreds of thousands of tons of trash, with thousands of sea birds gagging on cigarette lighters and reefs being decapitated by drifting fishing gear.

Improving these conditions won't be easy. It will require major clean-up expeditions, crewed by many strong backs. It will require a much greater enforcement effort on the high seas — much greater than Congress is willing to pay for. Ultimately it requires a far greater awareness on the part of passengers and crew aboard ocean-going craft that the seas upon which they travel are not a flush toilet.