October 7, 2016 — Kure Atoll, a speck of land in a federally protected marine area nearly 1,400 miles northwest of Honolulu, provides a safe haven for seabirds, rare fish, endangered seals and coral reefs.
And now, at least until a salvage operation can occur, it’s also home to an 8,000-pound excavator, which is leaking fuel, a roll of chain-link fencing, hunks of metal and broken glass that fell into the water when the boat carrying it capsized a quarter-mile offshore.
Two of the nine people aboard the 33-foot landing craft were injured in the Sept. 2 incident, which remains under investigation. They were treated and released by a doctor at nearby Midway Atoll.
The accident offers a rare look at some of the work being done inside Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument — a nearly 600,000-square-mile area around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands that’s off-limits to anyone without a special permit for conservation, education, research or cultural purposes.
President Barack Obama quadrupled the monument’s size in late August, making it the world’s largest protected marine area. The day before the vessel capsized he flew to nearby Midway Atoll to highlight the monument’s importance in protecting natural resources, fighting climate change and preserving heritage sites, which include sunken ships at Kure.
Employees of Element Environmental, a Hawaii environmental and engineering firm contracted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, were working on a nearly $1.5 million project at Kure Atoll that involved digging up 400 to 600 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated soil from an old U.S. Coast Guard dump site near the shoreline and reburying it in a more secure spot near the center of Green Island, the atoll’s largest land mass at six miles wide.