Channels of the Hawaiian Islands 7 miles. ʻAlalākeiki means "crying baby." The Kealaikahiki Channel is the channel between Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe. It literally means "the road to Tahiti"; if one takes a bearing off of Kealaikahiki Point on Kahoʻolawe while in the channel and heads directly straight, one arrives, more or less, in Tahiti. In practice, however, Polynesian navigators probably did not quite ply a straight route to Tahiti. The channel is 17 miles wide. The ʻAuʻau Channel is one of the most protected areas of ocean in the Hawaiian Islands, lying between Lānaʻi and Maui. The channel is also protected by Molokaʻi to the
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands introduced to Laysan and Lisianksi, where they multiplied and devoured most of the vegetation, permanently extinguishing several species. However, most of the damage was reversed, and the islands were restored largely to their pre-exploitation state. Some of the endemic species of the NWHI include the Nihoa and Laysan finch, the Laysan duck (the "rarest native waterfowl in the United States"), and the Nihoa fan palm. Other notable species are the Laysan albatross, the highly endangered Hawaiian monk seal, and the green sea turtle. The only native trapdoor spiders in the Hawaiian archipelago ("Nihoa" spp.), recently discovered, are found only here.