Remote Hawaiian Island Completely Wiped Out By Hurricane, Losing Critical Home For Endangered Species
A Hawaiian island was almost completely washed away by Hurricane Walaka, Civil Beat is reporting. Federal scientists were able to confirm on Monday, October 22, via satellite images that East Island is gone. East Island was one of the northwestern Hawaiian islands and even had a U.S. Coast Guard radar station until 1952. Many animals, such as Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles, called it home.
Chip Fletcher, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii, said he was aware that East Island would likely eventually be swallowed up by rising sea levels, but predicted that it would happen sometime within the next couple of decades. The satellite images, however, showed that the island was destroyed within a day.
“I had a holy s**t moment, thinking ‘Oh my God, it’s gone,'” said Fletcher. “It’s one more chink in the wall of the network of ecosystem diversity on this planet that is being dismantled.”
