The Indispensable Reefs are a chain of three large coral

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 in the Coral Sea. They are located about south of

Rennell Island Rennell Island, locally known as Mugaba, is the main island of two inhabited islands that make up the Rennell and Bellona Province in the nation state of Solomon Islands. Rennell Island has a land area of that is about long and wide. It is t ...

, separated from it by Rennel Trough. The chain stretches over a length of and its average width is . Administratively the Indispensable Reef belongs to the Rennell and Bellona Province of 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 ...

. They are locally called "Goto'akau". The three atolls are steep-to and each encloses a large deep

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'') ...

. They are separated by deep passages wide. The atolls of the Indispensable Reef are aligned in a NW-SE direction: *North Reef is long, and up to wide. The rim of the atoll has two narrow openings in the north and northwest. The reef has a total area of , including lagoon and reef flat. There are no islets. *Middle Reef is long. Little Nottingham Islet is a small islet located near the center of the reef. Besides its main lagoon, Middle Reef has a separate smaller northern lagoon. The total area is about . *South Reef is long and up to wide. It encloses a lagoon deep. The total area exceeds .

History

The ship ''Neptune'' struck Indispensable Reef on August 3, 1868, and was lost. The crew was rescued by the ''SS Boomerang.'' During the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 7, 1942, two Japanese carrier attack planes B5N2 (EI-306 and probably EI-302) flying reconnaissance mission from the carrier ''Shokaku'' ditched on Indispensable Reef due to lack of fuel.LUNDSTROM, John B. ''The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway''. Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, 2005. . page 205 80-G-7661

In the 1980s the Solomon Islands Government apprehended a vessel from

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

that had been poaching the

giant clam The giant clams are the members of the clam genus '' Tridacna'' that are the largest living bivalve mollusks. There are actually several species of "giant clams" in the genus '' Tridacna'', which are often misidentified for ''Tridacna gigas'', ...

stocks of Indispensable Reef. Corals and endangered fish species are also being plundered for the aquarium trade.

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20080120072247/http://solomonislands.com.sb/indispensablereefs.html * Corals: * Sunken ships

* Ecological concern

Uninhabited islands of the Solomon Islands Reefs of the Pacific Ocean Atolls of the Solomon Islands Landforms of the Coral Sea Coral reefs Rennell and Bellona Islands {{SolomonIslands-geo-stub

History

See also

References

External links