The Hawai'ian Islands are ground zero for the aquarium trade who capture and traffic reef fish for hobbyists’ tanks, decimating the reef, ocean and earth’s oxygen. Native Hawai'ians, conservationists, scientists, aquarium fish collectors and breeders are locked in a controversy over the stunning “treasure of Hawai'i” – the ornamental fish.

Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4,000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people. For five years the documentary production team Nā Maka o ka 'Āina ("the eyes of the land") captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea's unique 14,000-foot summit, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands: the mountain itself.