The
Pacific Islands comprise 20,000 to 30,000
islands in the
Pacific Ocean. Those islands lying south of the
tropic of Cancer are traditionally grouped into three divisions:
Melanesia,
Micronesia and
Polynesia.
Oceania
Pacific islands are also sometimes collectively called
Oceania (although Oceania is sometimes defined as also including
Australasia and the
Malay Archipelago),
- Polynesia means many islands. These include New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, the Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and Easter Island. It is the largest of the three zones.
The region's islands are classified into two groups,
high islands and
low islands.
Volcanoes form high islands, which generally can support more people and have a more fertile soil. Low islands are
reefs or
atolls, and are relatively small and infertile. Melanesia, the most populous of the three regions, contains mainly high islands, while most of Micronesia and Polynesia are low islands.
In addition, there are many other islands located within the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean that are not considered part of
Oceania. These islands include the
Galápagos Islands of
Ecuador; the
Aleutian Islands in
Alaska; the
Russian islands of
Sakhalin and
Kuril Islands;
Taiwan; the
Philippines; the
South China Sea Islands; most of the islands of
Indonesia; and the island nation of
Japan, which includes the
Ryukyu Islands. The inhabitants of these islands are not considered to be
Pacific Islanders and are usually identified with their nearest continent.
List of islands
This is a list of many of the major Pacific islands, organized by
archipelago or political unit. In order to keep this list of moderate size, links are given to more complete lists for countries with large numbers of small or uninhabited islands.
Note: many
Polynesian languages have a
glottal stop, which in most of them is seldomly written, however. If a name with a <
> cannot be found, try to rewrite it without it. See
'okina for more info.
- *Teraina/Washington Island (Kiribati)
- *Atafu (Duke of York Island)
- *Olohega (Swains island) (disputed)
- *Funafuti (atoll of at least 30 islands)
- *Nanumea (atoll of at least 6 islands)
- *Nui (atoll of at least 21 islands)
- *Vaitupu (atoll of at least 9 islands)
- *Hunter (claimed by France and Vanuatu)
- *Matthew (claimed by France and Vanuatu)
See also
Footnotes
