The Line Islands, Teraina Islands or Equatorial Islands (in
Gilbertese
Gilbertese or taetae ni Kiribati, also Kiribati (sometimes ''Kiribatese''), is an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati. It belongs to the Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages.
The word ''Kiribati'', the current name of the i ...
, ''Aono Raina'') are a chain of 11
atoll
An atoll () is a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical oceans and seas where corals can gr ...
s (with partly or fully enclosed
lagoon
A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') a ...
s) and
coral
Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and sec ...
island
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
s (with a surrounding
reef
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock o ...
) in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands ( haw, Nā Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kur ...
. The island chain stretches northwest to southeast across , making it one of the longest island chains in the world. It lies at the geographic center of the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
(), near
Starbuck Island
Starbuck Island (or Volunteer Island) is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific, and is part of the Central Line Islands of Kiribati. Former names include "Barren Island", "Coral Queen Island", "Hero Island", "Low Island", and " ...
.
One of the atolls in the group,
Kiritimati
Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name is derived from the English word "Christmas" written in Gilbertese according to its phonolog ...
, has the largest land area of any atoll in the world. Of the 11 atolls, all of which were formed by volcanic activity, only the
Kiritimati
Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name is derived from the English word "Christmas" written in Gilbertese according to its phonolog ...
and
Tabuaeran
Tabuaeran, also known as Fanning Island, is an atoll that is part of the Line Islands of the central Pacific Ocean and part of Kiribati. The land area is , and the population in 2015 was 2,315. The maximum elevation is about 3 m (10 f ...
atolls and
Teraina
Teraina (written also Teeraina, also known as Washington Island – these two names are constitutional) is a coral atoll in the central Pacific Ocean and part of the Northern Line Islands which belong to Kiribati. Obsolete names of Teraina a ...
island have a permanent population (one of the reefs,
Filippo Reef
Filippo Reef is a reef that is asserted to be in the Pacific Ocean at , east of Starbuck Island in the Line Islands. The reef was reported by the master of the Italian barque '' Filippo'' as having been seen on 28 June 1886. From an unidentifie ...
, is shown on some maps, but its existence is doubted). Eight of the atolls are parts of
Kiribati
Kiribati (), officially the Republic of Kiribati ( gil, ibaberikiKiribati),[Kiribati]
''The Wor ...
. The remaining three—
Jarvis Island
Jarvis Island (; formerly known as Bunker Island or Bunker's Shoal) is an uninhabited coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the Un ...
,
Kingman Reef
Kingman Reef is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, east-west and north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. It has an area of 3 hectar ...
(which is largely submerged), and
Palmyra Atoll
Palmyra Atoll (), also referred to as Palmyra Island, is one of the Northern Line Islands (southeast of Kingman Reef and north of Kiribati). It is located almost due south of the Hawaiian Islands, roughly one-third of the way between Hawaii a ...
—are
territories of the United States
Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the federal government of the United States. The various American territories differ from the U.S. states and Indian reservation, tribal reservations as ...
grouped with the
United States Minor Outlying Islands
The United States Minor Outlying Islands is a statistical designation defined by the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 3166-1 code. The entry code is ISO 3166-2:UM. The minor outlying islands and groups of islands consist ...
.
The
International Date Line
The International Date Line (IDL) is an internationally accepted demarcation on the surface of Earth, running between the South and North Poles and serving as the boundary between one calendar day and the next. It passes through the Pacific O ...
passes through the Line Islands. The ones that are parts of Kiribati are in the world's farthest forward
time zone
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...
,
UTC+14:00. The time of day is (UTC-10.00), the same as in the state of
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
in the United States, but the date is one day ahead of Hawaii. The time in the Line Islands is 26 hours ahead of some other islands in
Oceania
Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...
, such as
Baker Island
Baker Island, formerly known as New Nantucket, is an uninhabited atoll just north of the Equator in the central Pacific Ocean about southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbor is H ...
, which uses
UTC−12:00.
Overview
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 from copr ...
and
pet fish are the islands' main export products (along with seaweed).
![Map of Kiribati CIA WFB](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Map_of_Kiribati_CIA_WFB.png)
Archaeologists have identified the remains of coral
Marae
A ' (in New Zealand Māori, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian), ' (in Tongan), ' (in Marquesan) or ' (in Samoan) is a communal or sacred place that serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies. In all these languages, the term a ...
platforms and/or village complexes on several of the islands, including the Kiritimati and Tabuaeran atolls, Teraina Island, Malden, Millennium Atoll and Flint Island. These remains are dateable as far back as the 14th century, and show that the inhabitants of the Line Islands were more than just castaways.
Most 18th-century visitors to these isles overlooked these telltale signs of former Polynesian settlement. This included Captain Cook, who landed on Christmas Island in 1777, as well as Captain Fanning, who visited Teraina (Washington Island) and Tabuaeran (Fanning Atoll) in 1798.
In the 19th century,
whaling
Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution.
It was practiced as an organized industr ...
ships were regular visitors to the islands. They came in search of water, wood and provisions. The first whaler recorded to have visited one of them was the ''Coquette'', which docked at
Kiritimati
Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name is derived from the English word "Christmas" written in Gilbertese according to its phonolog ...
(then called Christmas Island) in 1822.
In 1888, the United Kingdom was planning to lay the
Pacific cable, and annexed the islands with a view to using Tabuaeran (then Fanning Island) as one of the relay stations for the cable. The cable was laid and was operational between 1902 and 1963 (except for a short period in 1914).
In 1916, the British annexed Fanning and Washington islands, making them part of the British colony of the
Gilbert and Ellice Islands. In 1919, they annexed Christmas Island to the same colony. The Line Islands occasionally featured briefly in the biennial reports furnished by the Colony's resident commissioner to the Colonial Office and Parliament in London (see, for example, the reports submitted in 1966 and 1967
[Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. (1969). Report for the Years 1966 and 1967. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.]).
The United States contested the British annexations, based on the U.S.
Guano Islands Act
The Guano Islands Act (, enacted August 18, 1856, codified at §§ 1411-1419) is a United States federal law passed by the U.S. Congress that enables citizens of the United States to take possession, in the name of the United States, of unclai ...
of 1856, which allowed for very wide-ranging territorial claims. It relinquished these claims only in 1979, when it entered into the
Treaty of Tarawa
On September 20, 1979, representatives of the newly independent Republic of Kiribati and of the United States met in Tarawa to sign a treaty of friendship between the two nations, known as the Treaty of Tarawa. More formally, the treaty is entit ...
, which recognised Kiribati's sovereignty over the majority of the Line Islands chain.
List of atolls, islands and reefs
Geographically, the Line Islands is divided into three subgroups: the Northern, Central, and Southern Line Islands (however, the Central Line Islands are sometimes grouped with the Southern Line Islands). The table below lists the islands from north to south.
Note:
*The lagoon areas marked with an asterisk are included in the land areas of the previous column because, unlike typical lagoons in atolls, they are inland waters completely sealed off from the sea.
Time zone realignment
![DateLine-with-Caroline-Island](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/DateLine-with-Caroline-Island.PNG)
On 23 December 1994, the Republic of Kiribati announced a change of
time zone
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...
for the Line Islands, to take effect 31 December 1994. This adjustment effectively moved the
International Date Line
The International Date Line (IDL) is an internationally accepted demarcation on the surface of Earth, running between the South and North Poles and serving as the boundary between one calendar day and the next. It passes through the Pacific O ...
more than to the east within Kiribati, which placed all of Kiribati on the Asian or western side of the date line, despite the fact that Millennium Island's longitude of 150 degrees west corresponds to
UTC−10:00 rather than to its official time zone of
UTC+14:00. Millennium Island is now at the same time as the Hawaiian Islands (
Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zone), but one day ahead.
This move made Millennium Island (then Caroline Island) the easternmost land in the earliest time zone (by some definitions, the
easternmost point on Earth), and one of the first points of land which saw sunrise on 1 January 2000 – at 5:43 am, as measured by local time.
The stated reason for the move was the fulfilment of a campaign promise that Kiribati President
Teburoro Tito
Teburoro Tito (''modern'' spelling Tiito, pronounced Seetoh) (born 25 August 1953) is an I-Kiribati politician who served as the President and foreign minister of Kiribati from 1 October 1994 to 28 March 2003. He was elected for the first time in ...
had made to eliminate the confusion caused by Kiribati straddling the Date Line and therefore being constantly in two different days. However, Kiribati officials were not reluctant to attempt to capitalise on the nation's new status as owners of the first land to see sunrise in 2000.
Other Pacific nations, including
Tonga
Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...
and New Zealand's
Chatham Islands
The Chatham Islands ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about te ...
, protested the move, objecting that it interfered with their own claims to be the first land to see dawn in the year 2000.
In 1999, to further capitalise upon the massive public interest in celebrations marking
the arrival of the year 2000, Caroline Island was officially renamed Millennium Island. Although the island is uninhabited, a special celebration was held there to mark the occasion. It featured performances by native Kiribati entertainers and was attended by Kiribati's President Tito.
Over 70 Kiribati singers and dancers travelled to Millennium Island from the capital,
South Tarawa
South Tarawa ( gil, Tarawa Teinainano) is the capital and hub of the Republic of Kiribati and home to more than half of Kiribati's population. The South Tarawa population centre consists of all the small islets from Betio in the west to Bonrik ...
,
accompanied by approximately 25 journalists. The celebration, which was broadcast worldwide by satellite, had an estimated audience size of as many as one billion viewers.
See also
*
List of islands in the Pacific Ocean
Collectively called the Pacific Islands, the islands in the Pacific Ocean are further categorized into three major island groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Depending on the context, the term ''Pacific Islands'' may refer to one of se ...
*
Polynesian Triangle
References
External links
*
National Geographic – Southern Line Islands Expedition, 2009
{{Authority control
Archipelagoes of the Pacific Ocean
Atolls of the Pacific Ocean
Disputed islands
Divided regions
Geography of Micronesia
Pacific islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act
Islands of Oceania
Archipelagoes of the United States
Eastern Indo-Pacific
Marine ecoregions