Tegua is an island in
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...
's
Torres Islands
The Torres Islands are an island chain in the Torba Province of the country of Vanuatu, the country’s northernmost island group. The chain of islands that make up this micro-archipelago straddles the broader cultural boundary between Island Me ...
chain, located in
Torba Province
Torba (or ''TorBa'') is the northernmost and least populous Provinces of Vanuatu, province of Vanuatu. It consists of the Banks Islands, Vanuatu, Banks Islands and the Torres Islands.
The province's name is derived from the initial letters of "' ...
.
Geography
The island spans 7 km by 6.5 km; on the eastern side of the island is Lateu Bay indented 1.8 km.
Ngwel Island is located 600 meters off the west coast of Tegua Island.
Population
The only village is Lateu, with a population of 58.
[
] About 100 residents of Tegua were evacuated by the government because
rising sea levels
The sea level has been rising from the end of the last ice age, which was around 20,000 years ago. Between 1901 and 2018, the average sea level rose by , with an increase of per year since the 1970s. This was faster than the sea level had e ...
were flooding their island.
One geological study found that of four islands in the group, Tegua had the slowest inferred uplift rate at 0.7 mm/yr for southeastern Tegua. A "narrow E-W trending block has been down-dropped relative to the rest of the isle.
Name
The name ''Tegua'' comes from the
Mota language
Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu. It is the most conservative Torres–Banks language, and the only one to keep its inherited five-vowel system intact while also preservin ...
, which was used as the primary language of the
Melanesian Mission
The Melanesian Mission is an Anglican missionary agency supporting the work of local Anglican churches in Melanesia. It was founded in 1849 by George Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand.
History
Bishop Selwyn's see was focused on New Zealan ...
. Locally, the island is called ''Tugue'' in
Lo-Toga
Lo-Toga is an Oceanic language spoken by about 580 people on the islands of Lo and Toga, in the Torres group of northern Vanuatu. The language has sometimes been called ''Loh'' or ''Toga'', after either of its two dialects.
Name
The languag ...
, and ''Töyö'' in
Hiw. These names all come from a
Proto-Torres-Banks form *''Teɣua''.
References
External links
“The Mystery of the Sinking South Pacific Islands”by Gerald Traufetter, ''
Der Spiegel
(, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
international'', 15/6/2012.
Islands of Vanuatu
Torba Province
{{Vanuatu-geo-stub