Mānana Island is an uninhabited

islet An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanen ...

located off Kaupō Beach, near Makapuu at the eastern end of the island of

Oahu Oahu () ( Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over two-thirds of the population of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The island of O� ...

in the Hawaiian Islands. In the Hawaiian language, ''mānana'' means "

buoyant Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is an upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus the pr ...

". The islet is commonly referred to as Rabbit Island, because its shape as seen from the nearby Oahu shore looks something like a rabbit's head and because it was once inhabited by introduced rabbits. The rabbit colony was established by

John Adams Cummins John Adams Kuakini Cummins (March 17, 1835 – March 21, 1913) was a member of the nobility of the Kingdom of Hawaii who became a wealthy businessman, and was involved in politics as the kingdom was overthrown. Life John Adams Kuakini Cummins ...

in the 1880s when he ran the nearby Waimānalo plantation. The rabbits were eradicated about a hundred years later because they were destroying the native ecosystem, an important

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...

breeding area. Mānana is a

tuff cone Volcanic cones are among the simplest volcanic landforms. They are built by ejecta from a volcanic vent, piling up around the vent in the shape of a cone with a central crater. Volcanic cones are of different types, depending upon the nature and s ...

with two vents or craters. The highest point on the islet rises to . The island is long and wide and has an area of about . Mānana's only

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class o ...

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc sh ...

is a small

storm beach A storm beach is a beach affected by particularly fierce waves, usually with a very long fetch. The resultant landform is often a very steep beach (up to 45°) composed of rounded cobbles, shingle and occasionally sand. The stones usually have an ...

on the west to south-west ( leeward) side of the islet. This sand deposit, located above the reach of the normal waves, is about wide and curves around to the western side of the island. Another volcanic islet named Kāohikaipu sits right next to Mānana. Manana was formed by the Honolulu Volcanic Series. These series of eruptions were responsible for creating other tuff cones such as

Punchbowl Crater Punchbowl Crater is an extinct volcanic tuff cone located in Honolulu, Hawaii. It is the location of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. The crater was formed some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago during the secondary activity of the H ...

. Mānana is a State Seabird Sanctuary—home to over 10,000

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 ...

s, 80,000 sooty terns, 20,000

brown noddy The brown noddy or common noddy (''Anous stolidus'') is a seabird in the family Laridae. The largest of the noddies, it can be told from the closely related black noddy by its larger size and plumage, which is dark brown rather than black. The b ...

s, 5–10

Bulwer's petrel Bulwer's petrel (''Bulweria bulwerii'') is a small petrel in the family Procellariidae that is found in tropical and subtropical regions of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is named after the English naturalist James Bulwer. Taxonomy ...

s, and 10–15 red-tailed tropicbirds, and numerous

Hawaiian monk seal The Hawaiian monk seal (''Neomonachus schauinslandi'') is an endangered species of earless seal in the family Phocidae that is endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian monk seal is one of two extant monk seal species; the other is the ...

s. It is illegal to land on the islet without permission from the

Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources The Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) is a part of the Hawaii state government dedicated to managing, administering, and exercising control over public lands, water resources and streams, ocean waters, coastal areas, minerals ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Manana Islands of Hawaii Geography of Honolulu County, Hawaii Volcanoes of Oahu Hotspot volcanoes Tuff cones Quaternary volcanoes Quaternary Oceania