Flint Island is an uninhabited

coral island A coral island is a type of island formed from coral detritus and associated organic material. It occurs in tropical and sub-tropical areas, typically as part of a coral reef which has grown to cover a far larger area under the sea. The term low ...

in the central

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

, part of the Southern

Line Islands The Line Islands, Teraina Islands or Equatorial Islands () are a chain of 11 atolls (with partly or fully enclosed lagoons, except Vostok and Jarvis) and coral islands (with a surrounding reef) in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the Hawa ...

under the jurisdiction of

Kiribati Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, and more than half live on Tarawa. The st ...

. In 2014 the I-Kiribati government established a exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands (Caroline, Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck) preventing fishing in the surrounding waters.

Geography

Flint Island is located about northwest of

Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian language, Tahitian , ; ) is the largest island of the Windward Islands (Society Islands), Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France. It is located in the central part of t ...

, south-southeast of Vostok Island, and southwest of Caroline Island. The island is about long and wide at its widest point (). It has a land area of and rises to a height of

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

. The island is surrounded by a narrow

fringing reef A fringing reef is one of the three main types of coral reef. It is distinguished from the other main types, barrier reefs and atolls, in that it has either an entirely shallow backreef zone (lagoon) or none at all. If a fringing reef grows direc ...

and with no safe anchorage, landing is difficult. According to the U.S. Exploring Expedition (February 5, 1841), the island was thickly wooded with

primeval forest An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without Disturbance (ecology), disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organizati ...

, however the island is now mostly covered with planted

coconut The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family (biology), family (Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, ...

palms. In the islands interior there are four lakes of brackish water with the largest, Lake Arundel being 168 meters across at its widest. The largest lake is theorized to be the remnant of a lagoon, the southernmost, Lake Chase was an old well that overflowed and the remaining lakes, Lake Mago and Lake Bunya were formed by guano mining. There is an abandoned network of tramways in the islands interior, which connect to Lake Mago and Lake Bunya, as they were formerly the largest guano mining area on the island. There is a small landing in the north-west of the reef blasted in, which is marked by a 9 meter tall concrete obelisk on the beach. Flint has been observed to experience much more rainfall than the other line islands, often experiencing weeks of rain at a time.

History

Flint Island was discovered by the Spanish expedition of

Ferdinand Magellan Ferdinand Magellan ( – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer best known for having planned and led the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he also discovered the Strait of Magellan, allowing his fl ...

on 4 February 1521, and charted as ''Tiburones'' (Sharks in Spanish) because of the many sharks that sailors fished in it. Together with Puka-Puka (named ''San Pablo'') they were named ''Islas Infortunadas'' (Unfortunate Islands in Spanish). Flint island was rediscovered on April 8, 1809, by the American captain Obed Chase in ship ''Hope'' (belonging to Edmund Fanning). On the Island Chase had nailed an American coin to a tree, which would also make him the first known person to have set foot on it. This is likely where the modern name was coined. A now-discredited theory held that the island was named after Captain Keen, who visited in 1835, but an entry in Krusenstern's ''Hydrographie der grössern Ozeane,'' published in 1819, makes it clear the island already had this name. Flint Island was claimed under the 1856

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

Guano Act, but it was apparently never occupied. It was leased by the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

to Houlder Brothers and Co. of

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

who carried out

guano Guano (Spanish from ) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. Guano is a highly effective fertiliser due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a le ...

digging in the central part of the island from 1875 to 1880 under field manager

John T. Arundel John T. Arundel (1 September 1841 – 30 November 1919) was an English entrepreneur who was instrumental in the development of the mining of phosphate rock on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Banaba (Ocean Island). Williams & Macdonald (1985) ...

. From 1881 John T. Arundel & Co. carried on the mining business. The excavated areas have since filled with brackish water, forming two of the four lakes. Coconut palms were planted on the island by Arundel in 1881 and

copra Copra (from ; ; ; ) is the dried, white flesh of the coconut from which coconut oil is extracted. Traditionally, the coconuts are sun-dried, especially for export, before the oil, also known as copra oil, is pressed out. The oil extracted ...

was produced until 1891. On 3 January 1908 a

total eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...

of the sun was observed on the island by two expeditions, one from the

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...

in California, and one from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

which included

Francis McClean Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Francis Kennedy McClean, (1 February 1876 – 11 August 1955) was a British civil engineer and pioneer aviator. Sir Francis was one of the founding members of the Royal Aero Club and one of the founders of naval aviati ...

and Henry Winkelmann. The observation point on the island was determined to be at latitude. The island was leased in 1911 to S.R. Maxwell and Co., Ltd. who employed 30 men and one manager to harvest copra from the approximately 30,000 coconut palms. The settlement was abandoned in 1929. Today the coconut palms have taken over 96% of the island and have killed all but few pisonia trees. On 11 August 1974 there were five Tahitian workers still mining guano, from a temporary camp, but the guano was of very poor quality and rarely actually sold.

Flora and Fauna

During the 1974 Line Islands expedition, it was reported that Flint Island was covered in a dense wild jungle of palm trees. The jungle is moist and makes prime habitation for Emoia Impar, which inhabit most of the island at a density of over 30 per square meter. Sooty Terns, Red-Footed Boobies and

Frigatebird Frigatebirds are a Family (biology), family of seabirds called Fregatidae which are found across all tropical and subtropical oceans. The five extant species are classified in a single genus, ''Fregata''. All have predominantly black plumage, l ...

s nest in the palm trees around the beaches, and Coconut Crabs live in the fallen trees in the jungle, which made it easier for them to reproduce to cover the island at a density of 1 per square meter, which could potentially give Flint Island the largest population of Coconut Crabs in the world, the other most likely contender would be South Islet in Caroline Atoll.

Photo gallery

File:Flint Island AKK Beach.jpg, Beach on Flint Island File:Flint Island AKK Fringing Reef.jpg, Fringing Reef on Flint Island File:Flint Island AKK Lake.jpg, Lake Arundel in Flint Island's interior File:Flint Island AKK Profile.jpg, Heavy vegetation on Flint Island File:Flint Island AKK Pisonia.jpg, Stand of Pisonia on Flint Island

References

External links

National Geographic - Southern Line Islands Expedition, 2014
* Krusenstern, A. J. von: Beyträge zur Hydrographie der grössern Ozeane als Erläuterungen zu einer Charte des ganzen Erdkreises nach Mercators Projection; Leipzig : Kummer, 1819 (from the digital collections of the Göttingen Library) (p. 20

{{Authority control Uninhabited islands of Kiribati Pacific islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act Former populated places in Kiribati Coral islands Former disputed islands Line Islands (Kiribati)

Geography

History

Flora and Fauna

Photo gallery

See also

References

External links