Micronesia - The Marshall Islands

By Thomas Booth

The Marshall Islands, named after a British sea captain who explored the group in 1788, are scattered like flung necklaces over about 750,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean. Positioned 2,200 miles southwest of Hawaii, they occupy an area between four and 2

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hunter Publishing
• Release date: Jul 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9780935161878

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owner Normal owner 2 40 2011-11-26T01:25:00Z 2011-11-26T01:25:00Z 1 26722 152318 1269 357 178683 10.2625

Micronesia - The Marshall Islands

INTRODUCTION

Micronesia is 2,147 islands surrounded by three million square miles of Pacific Ocean. Within this vastness, about the size of the continental United States, these tiny islands as the name Micronesia implies, include a total land area of 717 square miles. That's about the size of the state of Rhode Island, and certainly isn't much dry land in such an expanse of wet ocean. As to population, about 350,000 varied but handsome brown people live on 125 of these islands.

Geographically, the simplest reference we can make is to say that Micronesia lies mostly in the tropical North Pacific beyond the Dateline, roughly between Hawaii and the Philippines.

Physically, the first thing that comes to mind about these little-known islands is beauty. It's a tropically profound beauty associated with palm-clad islands, white sandy beaches, multi-hued gin-clear lagoons, and sometimes abrupt green mountains covered with jungle and laced with waterfalls.

The islands of Micronesia, of the entire Pacific, may be described as either high or low. Variations of each exist, but all fall into the following categories.

The Atoll is a coral reef, irregularly circular in shape, that forms a necklace of narrow islets. This complex, a living organism, has been created by volcanic activity, currents, winds, the growth of live coral polyps, over untold thousands of years. Usually no more than 16 feet above sea level, the ring of islets partially encloses a lagoon. The opening into the lagoon, generally on the leeward side, allows for the very careful passage of boats.

Atolls come in all sizes from mere dots of sea-washed coral with nothing on them except sea turtles and birds, to others that have enough exposed dry land to support a forest of tropical growth. Seen from the air for the first time, the size of atolls and their vibrant lagoons will startle you. Kwajelein, for example, is the biggest atoll in the world, and its lagoon encompasses 1,400 square miles of water.