OUT IN THE Pacific Ocean, the largest geographical feature of this planet, are thousands of islands.
Geologically speaking, there are three types of these islands. There are the big chunks that drifted away from the former mega continent we call Gondwana about a hundred million years ago, like Australia, New Zealand, etc. There has been volcanic activity that has added to the land mass of these islands and created new ones, like Hawaii. And there are coral atolls built from the labors of coral organisms on submerged volcanic seamounts.
Newly formed land masses were, in time, discovered by terrestrial plants and insects, then by birds, then by reptiles and mammals floating in on driftwood, then, eventually, many of them, by humans sailing on boats. The larger islands that split from the mega continent carried their flora and fauna with them.
The thousands of islands of the Pacific Ocean are roughly divided into several regions for purposes of discussion. The regions used to be derived from dominant human cultural-ethnic differences. Broadly speaking, these days there is an Indonesian region, a Melanesian region, a Western region, and an Oceanic region subdivided into Micronesia in the west, and Polynesia in the vast east. The Polynesian islands are sometimes referred to as the South Sea Islands.
