Leeward Islands and Nihoa Business & Shopping Hawaii Directory

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Nihoa Island in eList Hawaii Directory

Nihoa, also called Bird Island and Moku Manu, is located about 120 miles to the northwest of Niihau and 250 miles from Honolulu, the first of the chain of leeward Hawaiian Islands. It is the summit of a huge volcanic peak, only about 900 feet of which remains exposed above the sea. This exposed summit in shape resembles half of a cowboys saddle, Millers Peak (895 feet) being the pommel, and Tanager Peak (852 feet) its upcurved back. This island measures about 1,500 yards east and west by 300 to 1,000 yards wide. It can be compared only to half a saddle as the northern side drops off sheer in a nearly perpendicular cliff. Near its middle this cliff is 360 feet high; but both ends of its 1,500 foot length reach a height of over 800 feet. In places it appears to overhang. The western side of the island also is a cliff, which forms a right angle with the north face. The cliff also continues around the curve of the east end. The southern side of the island slopes upward in a series of six shallow valleys. A low cliff borders Adams Bay. The foot of the southern slope has been cut into to form a bench of terrace, ten to fifty feet wide and from four to eight feet above mean sea level. In the western much of the bay is a small sandy beach. Breaking waves prevent this from being a good landing place. The best spot at which to land is a rocky shell near the centre of the south slope. Here, in smooth weather, landing is not dangerous in the morning. The sea frequently becomes a little rougher in the afternoon. And in stormy weather landing is practically impossible. Nihoa is the remnant of a once much larger volcanic cone, according to Professor Harold S. Palmer, who reported upon the islands geology in Bishop Museum Bulletin 35, 1937. Its summit, as one can tell from the dip of the lava state, formerly was higher and to the northeast of the present summit. The entire northern portion of the island has been eroded away. At present the waves are still cutting back the foot of the cliff, so undermining the face that it falls from above, most of the material being carried away as it falls. The rocks are composed of both dike and flow basalt, some high in olivine crystals. No ash, bombs, or tuff have been found. The present area is about 156 acres, but much of the slope is too steep to be of any practical value. In contrast to the bare cliffs, the southern slopes appear brownish or greyish-green in colour from their vegetation. Most of the ridges are covered with two kinds of grass (Eragrositis variablis and Panicum torridum). The valleys are densely carpeted with greyish shrubs, mainly Chenopodium sandwichceum and Solanum nelsoni, among which are scattered ilima bushes (Sida fallax) and ohai, a leguminous shrub (Sesbania tomentosa). The only large plants are a few small clumps of loulu fan palms (Pritchardia remota), of which about 500 were counted in 1923, not including seedlings. Specimens of twenty flowering plants were collected by the Tanager Expedition, in 1923. Archaeological remains and old Hawaiian legends indicate that the island was both known and, at least intermittently, occupied by Hawaiians in olden days. They may have gone there on fishing trips or in search of birds feathers, and at an earlier , long forgotten period, stopped there en route to Necker Island or beyond. So many new and interesting archaeological sites were discovered on Nihoa in 1923, that the Tanager made a return visit the following year with scientists who made a thorough archaeological survey. Many of the old house sites and terraces used for cultivation were cleared as well as mapped. A total of 66 sites are reported upon by Kenneth P. Emory in Bishop Museum Bulletin 53, 1928, together with an interesting discussion of the agriculture and type of culture which must have existed on the island. The total of twelve acres of cultivated terraces might have produced 48 tons of sweet potatoes a year. These, with fish, might have been sufficient to feed quite a population, even the 175 persons which the number of house sites suggests. But the real problem was that of water, there being only three small seeps, none of which gave wager fit to drink in 1923. For many years the only regular inhabitants have been birds. These occur in vast numbers. Black-footed albatross had a colony on the summit, dome-shaped plateau; Bulwers petrel and wedge-tailed shearwaters occupied caves and burrows; red-tailed tropic birds hid beneath bushes; and the large frigate birds, three kinds of boobies, and five kinds of terns nested in all sorts of places from the ground to the crowns of the loulu palms. In addition to these sea birds there were two species of native land birds, the finch and the miller bird, both endemic species, found only on Nihoa, but related to species on Laysan.

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