Nikumaroro

Nikumaroro, previously known as Kemins Island or Gardner Island, is a part of the Phoenix Islands, Kiribati, in the western Pacific Ocean. It is a remote, elongated, triangular coral atoll with profuse vegetation and a large central marine lagoon. Nikumaroro is about 7.5 km (4.7 mi) long by 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide. Although occupied at various times during the past, the island is uninhabited today.

Kiribati declared the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in 2006, with the park being expanded in 2008. The 425,300-km2 (164,200-mi2) marine reserve contains eight coral atolls including Nikumaroro.

Nikumaroro has notably been the focus of considerable speculation and exploration as a possible location where pilot Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan might have landed in July 1937 when they vanished during their ill-fated flight to circumnavigate the globe. However, to date, although trace artifactual and osteological evidence more consistent with the presence of a Euro-American woman castaway on the island than with other known prior inhabitants, or prior castaways, has emerged, no conclusive evidence of her plane or of Earhart's presence specifically has been found on or in the vicinity of the island.

Features

The atoll's rim has two narrow entrances, Tatiman (pronounced as "tasiman" or "taziman") Passage, through which the tide runs, and Baureke Passage, which once held the tide but is now dry, both of which are bordered by a wide fringing reef, which forms a coral beach at low tide. The ocean beyond the reef is very deep, and the only anchorage is at the island's west end, across the reef from the ruins of a mid-20th-century British colonial village named Karake, but this is safe only with the southeast trade winds.