Eight months on Kure in Hawaii: Kiwi Charlie Thomas is going off the grid

Environmentalist Charlie Thomas, 18, is spending eight months on remote Kure Atoll. Photo / Dean Purcell

Teenage Kiwi eco crusader Charlie Thomas will spend most of the year on one of the world's most remote coral atolls helping threatened sea birds and doing a major digital detox at the same time.

She's heading for Kure, the northernmost atoll in the Hawaiian chain of islands. It's a ring of coral surrounding 86ha of land, occupied only by thousands of birds, monk seals and four humans on rotation for eight months.

The two field camp managers from Hawaii and another volunteer from Texas will be dropped off by a research ship on the atoll which is effectively in quarantine from the rest of the world.

They must take brand new clothes, which are frozen to kill bugs and no fresh food. What they eat can only be tinned or frozen. There's only solar power, no internet - just limited access to a satellite phone for emergencies or checking occasionally with families.

The remote team will clear the speck of land of invasive weeds, monitoring the birds and cleaning up the mountains of plastic waste that washes up on Kure's reefs from vast gyres of trash that drift around the Pacific.

Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Photo / AP

Thomas finished at Pinehurst School in 2018 and has just spent a year spreading the ocean clean-up message around schools in New Zealand through her role in the Sea Cleaners group whose leader Hayden Smith says he sees parallels between her and environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who is just a year younger.

Kure_Atoll

Smith says both are absolutely committed to their causes, passionate and expert at articulating their views. She's also media savvy - her mother is broadcaster Jeanette Thomas, longtime host of consumer show Target.

Thomas laughs off the comparison with Thunberg but says the Swedish teen is one of her idols.

''I wouldn't say that - I know of so many people who are doing amazing things and have the same beliefs that I have (but) I think she' awesome she talks about stuff that needs to be talked about and anybody that says otherwise is just jealous I think.''

She counts among other inspirations as 93-year-old Sir David Attenborough and an aged Laysan albatross, Wisdom, approaching 70 and one of the oldest known banded birds in the world who nests on Midway Atoll, about 100km away from Kure.

While Thunberg has become a little gloomy about the planet's future, Thomas is an optimist.

''There's no point in not being positive and losing hope because that means we give ump and then there's no hope of making a difference.''

Sea Cleaners Hayden Smith, Te-Ariki Waipouri-Rerekura and Charlie Thomas in Hawaii in 2018. Photo / Brett Phibbs

She says the little things - like not getting a lid for your coffee cup if you don't need it - make a difference and have a ripple effect.

The Sea Cleaners group picks up five container loads of rubbish a month from New Zealand's northern coasts and with the support of Hawaii Tourism Oceania and Hawaiian Airlines sent eight ambassadors to Oahu in 2018. The two businesses again are supporting Thomas to get to her Kure posting this year.

Hawaiian Airlines NZ country manager Russell Willis said at in Hawaiian culture and in our company, there was a strong sense of kuleana (responsibility) to take care of the land, ocean and community and to encourage future generations to do the same.

''Charlie is a great example of a young Kiwi doing exactly that and encouraging others to do the same, " he said.

Darragh Walshe, of Hawaii Tourism, said the tourist industry was working to reduce single use plastic in the islands but most of the waste that washed up there came from other parts of the Pacific.

He said the youth ambassador programme was growing.

''Charlie is very much a future leader when it comes to looking after our environment, and the Sea Cleaners Hawaii initiative has hopefully played a part in nurturing this passion and understanding of the plastic issue.''

Thomas said young people had most to lose from environmental degradation.

''We're the ones who are going to be around to see what the detrimental effect of decisions of the past,'' she said.

As for the big digital detox on Kure, Thomas is looking forward to it. In the past she has spent about two hours a day on social media but that interest has already been waning as what she was seeing on her feeds was becoming increasingly negative news and was overwhelming.

Kure is the most remote coral atoll in the world. Photo / Supplied

''I'm quite excited about having nothing. It's easy enough these days to say that you'll stop using it but it's to that easy because everywhere you go you're surrounded by it and everybody's using it. But going somewhere where there is nothing is pretty awesome.''

The team on Kure is confined to a tight area of land (whose high point is 6m above sea level) to avoid disturbing birds nests, some of which are underground, so exercise options are limited. Thomas says she's looking forward to learning Te Reo, Hawaiian and has a stack of books to read.

She'll also record her experiences in a journal and on film to share with school groups when she comes home.

She's the first Kiwi to be part of the programme run by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.

The wildlife refuge camp managers advise volunteers to bring plenty of photos of family, friends and pets (which for Thomas will be her two rescue dogs).

Given time off the grid and off devices there's another piece of critical advice: Write down passwords.