The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (originally named the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument) is a World Heritage listed, U.S. National Monument encompassing (an area larger than the country of Greece) of ocean waters, including ten islands and atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, internationally recognized for both its cultural and natural values as follows:"The area has deep cosmological and traditional significance for living Native Hawaiian culture, as an ancestral environment, as an embodiment of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between people and the natural world, and as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where the spirits return after death.