Fatutaka
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Fatutaka
OR:
Fatutaka on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

Fatutaka, Fatu Taka or Patu Taka (also known as Fataka and Mitre Island) is a small high island in the
Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...
province of Temotu in the south-west
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 conti ...
. The easternmost of the Solomon Islands, Fatutaka is located southeast of
Anuta Anuta is a small high island in the southeastern part of the Solomon Islands province of Temotu, one of the smallest permanently inhabited Polynesian islands. It is one of the Polynesian Outlier communities in Melanesia. Geography The island ...
and can be seen from there in clear weather. Fatutaka and Anuta were discovered by Admiral Edward Edwards in 1791. The island, located at , is a small rocky outcropping, rising to an elevation of . The total land area of the island is .


Human activities

The island's soil is rocky, and not especially fertile, although it has in the past been used as a
garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...
ing location for the people of Anuta. The population of Anuta, the closest inhabited island, regularly sail to Fatutaka to eat and collect sea-birds and their eggs. The birds of Fatukaka have never been surveyed although the presence of
Frigatebird Frigatebirds are a family of seabirds called Fregatidae which are found across all tropical and subtropical oceans. The five extant species are classified in a single genus, ''Fregata''. All have predominantly black plumage, long, deeply forke ...
, Eastern Reef Egret, Pacific Imperial Pigeon, and Emerald Dove have been reported.


Geology

Fatutaka is one of numerous volcanic highs, islands and banks, in the north-western North Fiji Basin south of the fossil Vitiaz Trench (10°30'–19°S, 169°–174°E). These highs are, however, located up to from the Vitiaz Trench and do not form a continuous chain derived from the trench, but are a series of massifs aligned on north–south trending faults. Anuta and Fatutaka consist of
basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...
ic lavas and
andesitic 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 predomin ...
breccia Breccia () is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language, in which it means "rubble". A breccia may have a variety of ...
s. In the 1970s the formation of Anuta and Fatutaka 2.2  was attributed to volcanism in the Vitiaz island arc during the initial
back-arc A back-arc basin is a type of geologic basin, found at some convergent plate boundaries. Presently all back-arc basins are submarine features associated with island arcs and subduction zones, with many found in the western Pacific Ocean. Most of ...
opening of the
North Fiji Basin The North Fiji Basin (NFB) is an oceanic basin west of Fiji in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is an actively spreading back-arc basin delimited by the Fiji islands to the east, the inactive Vitiaz Trench to the north, the Vanuatu/New Hebrides is ...
. The Vitiaz Arc volcanoes were, however, displaced in an earlier episode and the formation of the islands is now attributed to renewed volcanism associated with a change in motion of 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 I ...
2 Ma.


See also

*
Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of and a population of around 44.5 million ...
*
Pacific Islands 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 ...
*
Santa Cruz Islands The Santa Cruz Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Temotu Province of the nation of Solomon Islands discovered by the Spaniards. They lie approximately 250 miles (400 km) to the southeast of the Solomon Islands ...


References


Notes


Sources

* * * * * * * Islands of the Solomon Islands Volcanoes of the Solomon Islands {{Solomons-geo-stub