The Solander Islands / Hautere are three uninhabited

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

islets toward the western end of the

Foveaux Strait The Foveaux Strait, (, or , ) separates Stewart Island, New Zealand's third largest island, from the South Island. The strait is about 130 km long (from Ruapuke Island to Little Solander Island), and it widens (from 14 km at Ruapuk ...

just beyond New Zealand's

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

. The

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

name ''Hautere'' translates into English as "flying wind". The islands lie south of Prices Point, near where

Lake Hakapoua A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

drains through Big River to the ocean due west of

Te Waewae Bay Te Waewae Bay is the westernmost of three large bays lying on the Foveaux Strait coast of Southland, New Zealand, the others being Oreti Beach and Toetoes Bay. Twenty-seven kilometres in length, the western end of the bay is mountainous, with ...

, and northwest of the Putatara (Rugged) Point in the northwest of

Stewart Island / Rakiura Stewart Island ( mi, Rakiura, ' glowing skies', officially Stewart Island / Rakiura) is New Zealand's third-largest island, located south of the South Island, across the Foveaux Strait. It is a roughly triangular island with a total land ar ...

, or from Codfish Island / Whenua Hou. The islands measure . Administratively, the islands form part of

Southland District Southland District is a Districts of New Zealand, territorial authority district in New Zealand that covers the south of the South Island as well as Stewart Island, Stewart Island/Rakiura. History Southland District was formed through the 1989 lo ...

, making them the only uninhabited outlying island group of New Zealand to be part of a local authority. The islands are the tip of a larger submerged volcano, roughly equivalent in size to

Mount Taranaki Mount Taranaki (), also known as Mount Egmont, is a dormant stratovolcano in the Taranaki region on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island. It is the second highest point in the North Island, after Mount Ruapehu. The mountain has a seco ...

. It was formerly believed that the volcano last erupted roughly 2 million years ago, but in 2010

radiometric dating Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed. The method compares t ...

of rock samples from the island found that it was between 150,000 and 400,000 years old.

Islands

Solander Island / Hautere (also known in Māori as ''Te Niho a Kewa''), the main island, covers around , rising steeply to a peak above sea level. It is wooded except for its northeast end, mainly a bare, white rock. A deep cave is on the east side, Sealers Cave. Little Solander Island is west. It reaches high yet covers . It has a barren appearance and is

guano Guano (Spanish from qu, wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. G ...

-covered. Pierced Rock is south of the main island. It rises to and covers (0.2 ha).

History

The island chain was sighted by Captain

James Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...

on 11 March 1770 and named by him after the Swedish naturalist

Daniel Solander Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander (19 February 1733 – 13 May 1782) was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university-educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil. Biography ...

, one of the scientific crew aboard Cook's ship, '' Endeavour''. The islands are geographically forbidding and weather conditions often confound the approach of ships, dissuading attempts at permanent habitation. Australian sealers briefly made use of the islands during the early 19th century, likely living on small flats between the island's cliffs and its shoreline for stints of a few months. Castaways would occasionally end up on the islands, and in 1813, a passing ship bound for Stewart Island found five men in need of rescue. The men – four Europeans and one Australian aboriginal – were marooned there between 1808 and 1813, representing the longest continual period of habitation on the islands. They are thought to have been left ashore in two groups for seal hunting (sealing), but the sea prevented the approach of any ship to recover them. In 1810, sealing moved to

Macquarie Island Macquarie Island is an island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. Regionally part of Oceania and politically a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1900, it became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 197 ...

, farther to the west, and they were effectively abandoned. When rediscovered in 1813, it is likely that they had amassed many dried seal pelts.

Geology

The islands are remnants of an isolated extinct

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

volcano with

andesite Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predomi ...

rocks, 150 to 400 thousand years old. They lie on a bank with depths less than , separated from the

continental shelf A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island ...

along Foveaux Strait by a but narrow trough deep (at least ). Therefore, the islands are included in the

New Zealand Outlying Islands The New Zealand outlying islands are nine offshore island groups that are part of New Zealand, with all but Solander Islands lying beyond the 12nm limit of the mainland's territorial waters. Although considered an integral parts of New Zealand ...

. The islands are the only volcanic land in New Zealand related to the subduction of the

Australian Plate The Australian Plate is a major tectonic plate in the eastern and, largely, southern hemispheres. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, Australia remained connected to India and Antarctica until approximately when India broke ...

beneath the

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and Iza ...

along the

Puysegur Trench The deepStern, Robert J. (2004)Subduction initiation: spontaneous and induced Earth and Planetary Science Letters 226, 275–292. . Puysegur Trench is a deep cleft in the floor of the south Tasman Sea formed by the subduction of the Indo-Austral ...

, which extends southwards from the end of the

Alpine Fault The Alpine Fault is a geological fault that runs almost the entire length of New Zealand's South Island (c. 480 km) and forms the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the Indo-Australian Plate. The Southern Alps have been uplifted on the f ...

Flora and fauna

There are 53 vascular plant species, one third of which are very rare. The flora is dominated by

fern A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes except t ...

s and

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...

s. The southern, and nominate,

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

of Buller's albatross (''Thalassarche b. bulleri'') breeds only on the Solanders and the Snares. The Solander Islands were historically a well-known area for migrating whales, especially southern right and

sperm whale The sperm whale or cachalot (''Physeter macrocephalus'') is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus ''Physeter'' and one of three extant species in the sperm whale famil ...

s. Sperm whales in this area were said to be exceptionally large.

Bird life

The islands are home to a variety of bird life. The Solander group has been identified as an

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 Int ...

(IBA) by

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 ...

because of its significance as a breeding site for Buller's albatrosses (with about 5000 pairs) and

common diving petrel The common diving petrel (''Pelecanoides urinatrix''), also known as the smaller diving petrel or simply the diving petrel, is a diving petrel, one of four very similar auk-like small petrels of the southern oceans. It is native to South Atlant ...

s.BirdLife International. (2012). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Solander Islands. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 27 January 2012.

References

External links

Geology

Botany

Fauna (Albatrosses)

Nautical information

photo
{{Authority control Islands of Southland, New Zealand New Zealand outlying islands Volcanoes of the New Zealand outlying islands Pleistocene volcanoes Extinct volcanoes Important Bird Areas of New Zealand Volcanic islands of New Zealand Uninhabited islands of New Zealand Foveaux Strait Islands of the New Zealand outlying islands