CONSERVATION
The death of Christian Holmes and World War II would again alter the fate of tiny Moku O Lo‘e. Holmes’ heirs sold the island to a group of investors who wanted to transform the island into an exclusive country club. One of the original investors was a wealthy California oilman named Edwin W. Pauley. The country club didn’t materialize, but a hotel and restaurant were opened on the island in the 1950s. Pauley, however, had different plans for the island and worked tirelessly to keep ill-conceived commercial interests at bay while simultaneously promoting the island as a natural laboratory for marine biology. Pauley’s enthusiasm for education was matched by his high-level involvement in the Democratic political party, one of the island’s more famous visitors being President Harry S. Truman. For most of the year, Edwin Pauley advised U.S. presidents and met with foreign dignitaries. Then the Pauley family would retreat to Moku O Lo‘e for a summer respite. By the 1950s, kings, presidents, movie stars, and millionaires became regular guests of the Pauley family at Coconut Island. Holmes created the ideal facilities for the beginnings of a marine laboratory, but it was Edwin Pauley who provided the necessary resources and support that would eventually form the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology. He invited Bob Hiatt, a professor at the University of Hawai‘i, to develop a marine laboratory on the island after they initially met in 1947. Hiatt and Pauley’s initial development of the laboratories at Coconut Island started a tradition that was carried on by a host of directors, who supervised a growing number of faculty, students and researchers that used the island’s facilities. The island would remain in the Pauley family into the 1980s, at which they sold it to a wealthy Japanese developer named Katsuhiro Kawaguchi. Kawaguchi was a colorful character and, like the Pauley family, he took a special interest in the island’s marine laboratories, providing financial support for the facilities and research. As with many Japanese investors, Hawai‘i’s real estate boom of the 1980s succumbed to an economic recession in Japan in the 1990s. Kawaguchi eventually sold the island to the University of Hawai‘i Foundation in 1995 for $2 million, which was made possible by a generous donation by the Edwin W. Pauley Foundation. With this transfer, the natural laboratory of Moku O Lo‘e would become Hawai‘i’s center for marine science research and education. Over the past six decades, the laboratories and facilities on the small island have become home to some of the best scientists in the world. Dr. Jo-Ann Leong, the institute’s current director, has facilitated the ascendancy of HIMB as a renowned research center. Dr. Leong, a fifth-generation descendant of Chinese immigrants to Hawai‘i, was formerly a professor at Oregon State University where she studied viruses, disease and their impact on aquatic species. She returned home with the vision of HIMB as an institution that would lead the way in meeting Hawai‘i’s research, training and education challenges of the 21st century. “It’s the only site in the world with this incredible technology within thirty feet of a coral reef,” says Dr. Leong, highlighting the institute’s unique research advantages and its emerging role in the island community. “Having that carries a responsibility to use these technologies wisely and to help properly care for these resources.” One of these technologies is the high-tech Evolutionary Genetics Core Facility, a state-of-the-art facility funded through a National Science Foundation grant program called the Experimental Programs to Stimulate Competitiveness in Research, or EPSCoR. The lab boasts some of the most up-to-date and advanced technology for genetics research available worldwide. In this facility, faculty and student researchers are discovering incredible information about the marine species that inhabit Hawaiian coral reef ecosystems. Part of this research is funded through a strategic partnership
Biological technician Ann Farrell is part of HIMB’s support staff and is responsible for the husbandry of the mushroom corals.
Built by Christian Holmes to raise bait fish and keep sharks for his own amusement, the fishponds on the leeward side of the islet are now the home of black tip, white tip and hammerhead shark research.
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