Gov. Linda Lingle is used to the long flights to the Mainland and Asia.

But today, she'll board a nearly six-hour flight that will take her mostly over Hawaiian waters, on her first tour of the vast and largely unpopulated Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

In late September Lingle signed regulations making a marine refuge out of the state waters surrounding the islands and atolls of the area stretching 1,200 miles northwest of Kaua'i.

Accompanying her on her two-day journey, stopping for the night at Midway Atoll, will be independent, state and federal environmental officials, including Jean-Michel Cousteau of the Ocean Futures Society; Jim Connaugton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; and Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett.

"These are key people at the national level — and Cousteau at an international level — who can make a big difference for us as we try to get the federal government to create this marine sanctuary in a way that allows the state to remain a partner," Lingle said.

Federal authorities have so far been working closely with the state, she said.

"We don't want a sanctuary that cuts the state out," she said after a Friday news conference on disaster preparedness.

Spending time with the federal officials on the flight and on Midway will "help us to achieve the goal the people of Hawai'i have for the protection of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands," Lingle said.

Scarlett said Lingle has taken a keen interest in seeking partnerships with the federal government on protection of coral reefs and other fragile features of the area's land and waters.

The state's new refuge bans all fishing within state waters extending three miles out from the shores of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Lingle is pushing for a similar prohibition in federal waters, which are set to become the nation's 14th marine sanctuary.

Lingle is hoping to win UNESCO World Heritage Site status for the islands, which account for about 70 percent of all U.S. coral reefs and host scores of fish species and endangered Hawaiian monk seals and sea turtles.

Hawai'i already has one World Heritage Site, the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island.

Scarlett said she expects to speak with Lingle to find out what the governor hopes to achieve with World Heritage status for the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, and whether that designation will help with conservation goals.