Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, about 1,000 miles southwest of Honolulu, is truly isolated. Its 52 islets encircle three lagoons and are surrounded by a diverse 16,000acre coral reef ecosystem. It is a rare protected atoll in 450,000 square miles of ocean for nesting seabirds, migratory fishes and threatened sea turtles, and it has never been permanently settled.
Its location, rich biological systems and lack of persistent human pressures make it a singular setting for research. In 2004, several public and private institutions formed the Palmyra Atoll Research Consortium (PARC). Its mission is to understand the terrestrial, marine and climate systems of the atoll and the central Pacific and advance the conservation of island and coastal systems worldwide.
PARC members include the American Museum of Natural History; Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Stanford University; The Nature Conservancy; the U.S. Geological Survey; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Hawaii at Manoa; and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Scientists from these institutions periodically shuttle on and off the refuge to conduct research across an array of subspecialties.
Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge offers a powerful complement to existing Pacific research stations, and through coordinated research with global colleagues, PARC is poised to address some of the most pressing conservation and restoration challenges of our time.