Verlaten Island (Dutch: "Abandoned", "Deserted" or "Forsaken"; modern Indonesian: Sertung) is an island that was likely created in the 535 Eruption of Krakatoa. It is located in the Sunda Strait in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, between

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

and Sumatra. It is part of the

Krakatoa Archipelago The Krakatoa Archipelago is a small uninhabited archipelago of volcanic islands formed by the Krakatoa stratovolcano located in the Sunda Strait, nestled between the much larger islands of Java and Sumatra. As of 2018, the archipelago consists ...

, above the famous

Krakatoa Krakatoa (), also transcribed (), is a caldera in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in the Indonesian province of Lampung. The caldera is part of a volcanic island group ( Krakatoa archipelago) comprising four islands. T ...

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

. Other than some minor collapse in the southeast (closest to the main island of Krakatoa), Verlaten suffered little damage in the 1883 eruption. Instead, it grew almost 3 times in area due to

pumice Pumice (), called pumicite in its powdered or dust form, is a volcanic rock that consists of highly vesicular rough-textured volcanic glass, which may or may not contain crystals. It is typically light-colored. Scoria is another vesicular v ...

fall, although most of the gain was quickly eroded away.

Form

Verlaten is a rather low island with a hill in the middle. After the 1883 eruption, Verlaten developed a low spit of land to the north-east with a

brackish Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estu ...

lake near the end. This lake became a waterfowl haven, but has since been breached by wave erosion.

References

Furneaux, Rupert (1964) Krakatoa Krakatoa Islands of the Sunda Strait {{Lampung-geo-stub