Alto Velo Island (; also called Alta Vela Island) is a small uninhabited island south of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea. Its maximum height is about above sea level. It lies on an underwater mountain range which continues to

Beata Island Beata Island () is a small island on the Caribbean Sea, located southwest from Cape Beata. Some southwest of it lies the smaller Alto Velo Island. It is politically part of the Dominican Republic, and is roughly triangle-shaped and fairly flat ...

(about away, separated by the Alto Velo Channel) and the southwestern coast of the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

. It has an area of and is long, being oval in shape.

Location

It is located about southwest of

Santo Domingo Santo Domingo, formerly known as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic and the List of metropolitan areas in the Caribbean, largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population. the Distrito Na ...

, and south of Pedernales, making it the southernmost point of the Dominican Republic, a distinction sometimes claimed by Beata Island.

Government

The island is part of the province of Pedernales in the

Conservation

Alto Velo and Beata Islands belong to the

Jaragua National Park Jaragua National Park () is a Dominican national park located in Pedernales Province, in the extreme southwest of the Dominican Republic. Jaragua has a total area of 1,374 km² (905 km² of which are offshore marine habitats), the largest such pro ...

, the largest protected area in the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

region.

History

The island was visited by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1494; his crew caught and killed seabirds and eight

Caribbean monk seal The Caribbean monk seal (''Neomonachus tropicalis''), also known as the West Indian seal or sea wolf, is an extinct species of seal native to the Caribbean. The main natural predators of Caribbean monk seals were large sharks, such as great whi ...

s on the island, which he named because from a distance it looked like a tall ship at sail. In 1863, the Confederate

commerce raider Commerce raiding is a form of naval warfare used to destroy or disrupt logistics of the enemy on the open sea by attacking its merchant shipping, rather than engaging its combatants or enforcing a blockade against them. Privateering is a fo ...

CSS ''Alabama'' captured and burned at sea the Boston-based schooner ''Chatelaine'' off the coast of Alto Velo Island. In the 1860s, at least three U.S.-based companies claimed the island under the

Guano Islands Act The Guano Islands Act (, enacted August 18, 1856, codified at §§ 1411-1419) is a United States federal law passed by the Congress that enables citizens of the United States to take possession of unclaimed islands containing guano deposits ...

; however, the

U.S. Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

determined that the island, despite lying in an area then-disputed between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, likely belonged to the Dominican Republic (due to historical Spanish claims, geography, and other factors) and therefore could not be claimed under the act. A 1932 U.S. Department of State report on the status of Guano Island Act claims included Alto Velo among the islands "to which the United States has no claim." Dominican officials authorized foreign concessionaires to mine guano from the island until the early 20th century, when synthetic fertilizers became common. A 1950 botanical expedition to Alto Velo noted that "the scars of the mining operations on the leeward slopes of the island" remained visible and that "artifacts of mining still litter portions of the hill."

Location

Government

Conservation

History

See also

References

Further reading