More than 57,000 comments so far have resulted in a preliminary plan to manage the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, and government officials want even more input on how to run the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands over the next 15 years.

The four-volume, 1,200-page draft of the management plan is so massive that Gov. Linda Lingle joked yesterday that she probably won't read it herself and will leave the details to the experts.

But at a Washington Place ceremony yesterday attended by Lynn Scarlett, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and retired Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., NOAA administrator, Lingle encouraged citizens to send even more input on the management plan for the country's largest protected marine area, which spans nearly 140,000 square miles.

William Aila served on the monument's advisory council and the Native Hawaiian advisory panel to the advisory council and attended yesterday's ceremony. He likes what he's seen so far since President Bush designated the area a marine national monument in 2006.

Aila agrees with most of the rules, such as requiring Native Hawaiians who follow traditional gathering practices to consume harvested foods within the monument. And having U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel escort cultural practitioners lets both sides better understand each other's points of view, Aila said.

But Aila hopes the final management plan allows for traditional exceptions, such as continuing to allow a few dozen people from Ni'ihau to bring salt, bird feathers and fish out of the monument and back to family on Ni'ihau and Kaua'i as they have for generations.

"Salt is plentiful in the main Hawaiian Islands," Aila said. "But salt from special places has mana."

"The rules that are in place are good," Aila said, "but there is room to make exceptions in special cases."

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are home to more than 7,000 marine species, a quarter of which are found nowhere else. The islands are the primary habitat for critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles, and thousands of sea birds and plant species.

The state of Hawai'i, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Commerce are responsible for managing the monument in accordance with the presidential proclamation that established it.

Lingle concluded yesterday's ceremony by thanking the dozens of people in the audience who fought for the Papahanaumo-kuakea Marine National Monument.

"Had you not stuck with it, government on its own would not have done this. I'm confident of that," Lingle said.