Beacon Island (Houtman Abrolhos)
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Beacon Island (Houtman Abrolhos)
Beacon Island, also known as Batavia's graveyard, is an island on the eastern side of the Wallabi Group at the northern end of the Houtman Abrolhos, in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia. Description The J-shaped coral island has an area of , length of approximately , with approximately of shoreline. The island has a low elevation, mostly less than , and is part of the Morning Reef complex composed of coral shingle. The surface is mostly sandy but has some pockets of guano and some exposed coral. History The island is best known as the location of the wreck and mutiny. ''Batavia'' was wrecked on Morning Reef in June 1629. Most of the 316 passengers and crew were washed ashore on the smaller islands on the eastern side of the Wallabi Group. The commander, Francisco Pelsaert, and 47 other crew and passengers set off in one the longboats in search of water but ended up sailing to Indonesia. When Pelsaert returned to the Abrolhos he found that ''Batavia''s ...
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Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by the Southern Ocean or Antarctica, depending on the definition in use. Along its core, the Indian Ocean has some large marginal or regional seas such as the Arabian Sea, Laccadive Sea, Bay of Bengal, and Andaman Sea. Etymology The Indian Ocean has been known by its present name since at least 1515 when the Latin form ''Oceanus Orientalis Indicus'' ("Indian Eastern Ocean") is attested, named after Indian subcontinent, India, which projects into it. It was earlier known as the ''Eastern Ocean'', a term that was still in use during the mid-18th century (see map), as opposed to the ''Western Ocean'' (Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic) before the Pacific Ocean, Pacific was surmised. Conversely, Ming treasure voyages, Chinese explorers in the Indian Oce ...
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Jeronimus Cornelisz
Jeronimus Cornelisz (c. 1598 – 2 October 1629) was a Dutch apothecary and Dutch East India Company merchant who sailed aboard the merchant ship which foundered near the Australian mainland. Cornelisz then led one of the bloodiest mutinies in history. After the ship was wrecked in the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of coral islands off the west coast of Australia, on 4 June 1629, Francisco Pelsaert, the expedition's commander, went to get help from the settlements in the Dutch East Indies, returning several months later. While Pelsaert was away, Cornelisz led one of the bloodiest mutinies in history, for which he was eventually tried, convicted and hanged. Early life Cornelisz was probably born in the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden, where he grew up in a nonconformist household. His mother—and likely his father, too—belonged to the Netherlands' Mennonite Church, members of an Anabaptist church. It has been speculated that they may have had links with some of the more mi ...
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Important Bird Areas Of Western Australia
Importance is a property of entities that matter or make a difference. For example, World War II was an important event and Albert Einstein was an important person because of how they affected the world. There are disagreements in the academic literature about what type of difference is required. According to the causal impact view, something is important if it has a big causal impact on the world. This view is rejected by various theorists, who insist that an additional aspect is required: that the impact in question makes a value difference. This is often understood in terms of how the important thing affects the well-being of people. So on this view, World War II was important, not just because it brought about many wide-ranging changes but because these changes had severe negative impacts on the well-being of the people involved. The difference in question is usually understood counterfactually as the contrast between how the world actually is and how the world would have bee ...
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Batavia (1628 Ship)
''Batavia'' () was a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the company's new flagship, she sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. On 4 June 1629, ''Batavia'' was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands off the western coast of Australia. As the ship broke apart, approximately 300 of the ''Batavias 341 passengers made their way ashore, the rest drowning in their attempts. The ship's commander, Francisco Pelsaert, sailed to Batavia to get help, leaving in charge Jeronimus Cornelisz, a senior VOC official who, unbeknownst to Pelsaert, had been plotting a mutiny prior to the wreck. Cornelisz sent about 20 men under soldier Wiebbe Hayes to nearby islands under the pretense of having them search for fresh water, abandoning them there to die. With the help of other mutineers, he then orchestrated a massacre that, over the course of several weeks, resulted in the murder of approximately ...
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Australian National Heritage List
The Australian National Heritage List or National Heritage List (NHL) is a heritage register, a list of national heritage places deemed to be of outstanding heritage significance to Australia, established in 2003. The list includes natural and historic places, including those of cultural significance to Indigenous Australians such as Aboriginal Australian sacred sites. Having been assessed against a set list of criteria, once a place is put on the National Heritage List, the provisions of the ''Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999'' (''EPBC Act'') apply. All places on this list can be found on the online Australian Heritage Database, along with other places on other Australian and world heritage listings. History The National Heritage List was established in 2003 by an amendment to the ''Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999''. The National Heritage List, together with the Commonwealth Heritage List, replaced the former Registe ...
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Wedge-tailed Shearwater
The wedge-tailed shearwater (''Ardenna pacifica'') is a medium-large shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. It is one of the shearwater species that is sometimes referred to as a muttonbird, like the sooty shearwater of New Zealand and the short-tailed shearwater of Australia. It ranges throughout the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans, roughly between latitudes 35°N and 35°S. It breeds on islands off Japan, on the Islas Revillagigedo, the Hawaiian Islands, the Seychelles, the Northern Mariana Islands, and off Eastern and Western Australia. Taxonomy The wedge-tailed shearwater was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's ''Systema Naturae''. He placed it with the petrels in the genus ''Procellaria'' and coined the binomial name ''Procellaria pacifica''. Gmelin based his description on the "Pacific petrel" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham i ...
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BirdLife International
BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding important sites for birds, maintaining and restoring key bird habitats, and empowering conservationists worldwide. It has a membership of more than 2.5 million people across 116 country partner organizations, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wild Bird Society of Japan, the National Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy. BirdLife International has identified 13,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas and is the official International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List authority for birds. As of 2015, BirdLife International has established that 1,375 bird species (13% of the total) are threatened with extinction ( critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable). BirdLife International p ...
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Important Bird Area
An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife International. There are over 13,000 IBAs worldwide. These sites are small enough to be entirely conserved and differ in their character, habitat or ornithological importance from the surrounding habitat. In the United States the Program is administered by the National Audubon Society. Often IBAs form part of a country's existing protected area network, and so are protected under national legislation. Legal recognition and protection of IBAs that are not within existing protected areas varies within different countries. Some countries have a National IBA Conservation Strategy, whereas in others protection is completely lacking. History In 1985, following a specific request from the European Economic Community, Birdlife International ...
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Crayfish
Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans belonging to the clade Astacidea, which also contains lobsters. In some locations, they are also known as crawfish, craydids, crawdaddies, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, mountain lobsters, rock lobsters, mudbugs, baybugs or yabbies. Taxonomically, they are members of the superfamilies Astacoidea and Parastacoidea. They breathe through feather-like gills. Some species are found in brooks and streams, where fresh water is running, while others thrive in swamps, ditches, and paddy fields. Most crayfish cannot tolerate polluted water, although some species, such as ''Procambarus clarkii'', are hardier. Crayfish feed on animals and plants, either living or decomposing, and detritus. The term "crayfish" is applied to saltwater species in some countries. Terminology The name "crayfish" comes from the Old French word ' (Modern French '). The word has been modified to "crayfish" by association with "fish" (folk etymology). The largely American ...
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Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at . With over 275 million people, Indonesia is the world's fourth-most populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world's most populous island, is home to more than half of the country's population. Indonesia is a presidential republic with an elected legislature. It has 38 provinces, of which nine have special status. The country's capital, Jakarta, is the world's second-most populous urban area. Indonesia shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the eastern part of Malaysia, as well as maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and India ...
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Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a total land area of . It is the second-largest country subdivision in the world, surpassed only by Russia's Sakha Republic. the state has 2.76 million inhabitants  percent of the national total. The vast majority (92 percent) live in the south-west corner; 79 percent of the population lives in the Perth area, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated. The first Europeans to visit Western Australia belonged to the Dutch Dirk Hartog expedition, who visited the Western Australian coast in 1616. The first permanent European colony of Western Australia occurred following the ...
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Francisco Pelsaert
Francisco Pelsaert ( – September 1630) was a Dutch merchant who worked for the Dutch East India Company best known for his role as the commander of the . The ship ran aground in the Houtman Abrolhos, off the coastal regions of Western Australia in June 1629, which led to a massacre of survivors orchestrated by Jeronimus Cornelisz. Background Born in Antwerp, Pelsaert joined the Dutch East India Company and sailed to India in 1618, where he was posted as a junior merchant, spending seven years in Agra during which time he became a senior merchant. After a brief return to the United Provinces of the Netherlands, United Provinces in 1628, he departed for Java soon after in command of the ''Batavia''. ''Batavia'' During the voyage from the Texel to Java, a company official, Jeronimus Cornelisz, and the ship's skipper Ariaen Jacobsz, had plotted but never attempted a mutiny against Pelsaert. Before this was possible, the ship had been wrecked. The wreck of the ''Batavia ...
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