Landing on Swains Island is made on the west side at Taulaga, the only village on the island. Besides a small number of thatched, Samoan- style huts ("fale"), Taulaga has a small white church and a large, barn- like copra shed. Leading from the copra shed to the nearby beach are old railway tracks which were once used to transport copra from the shed to the beach for transfer to cargo vessels. Nearby is a large cleared area that may one day be made into an airport runway to link Swains Island by air to Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa.
Species-numbers relationships in the McKean Island assemblage
of reef-building corals were investigated to discover how they changed along environmental gradients of the reef. For the purposes of the study, two gradients were identified a complex depth gradient and a wave exposure gradient.
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Call Number: [EL]
Physical Description: 42 p.
Christmas island3, the largest atoll in the world in terms of
As of 1969, the scientific community had no general information on the natural history of Namoluk Atoll in the Eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia. The only significant published source for the atoll was an ethnographic and linguistic account provided by the German physician.
Interface habitats, areas where aquatic and terrestrial habitats intersect, play important functional roles. Interface habitats mediate the exchange of resources (e.g.. energy,
nutrients, water), alter abiotic gradients (e.g.. temperature, salinity, pH. sedimentation, nutrients), insulate abutting habitats from disturbances, and serve as critical habitat in
During participation in part of the Fairbridge Expedition
to New Guinea, February to May, 1969, I had opportunity to visit 17 islands and cays east of the New Guinea mainland for sufficient time to assemble reasonably complete collections oi their terrestrial reptilian fauna. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of that survey. Fairbridge (1971 ) has previously published a brief report on the expedition and. a more detailed one is in preparation.
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Call Number: [EL]
Physical Description: 41 p.
During the period February 13 to 20, 1973, a visit was made to Canton Island for the purpose of conducting a preliminary survey of marine turtle nesting populations. Although previous investigators have described the sea birds (Buddle, 1938; Murphy G., 1954), insects (Van Zwaluwenburg, 1943, 1955), and vegetation (Hatheway, 1955), very little is known about the marine environment of Canton or the other seven atolls (Enderbury, Birnie, Phoenix, Sydney, Hull, Gardner and McKean) which comprise the Phoenix group.
In 1965 Vostok Island was visited briefly by Sibley and five members of the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (POBSPJ of the Smithsonian Institution. Observations were made from 0900 15 June through 1300 16 June and collections were made of vascular plants, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and avian ectoparasites. A small number of seabirds was banded.
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Call Number: [EL]
Physical Description: 12 Pages
From 0900 on 17 June to 0615 on 19 June 1965 Caroline Atoll was visited by a field party from the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (POBSP) of the Smithsonian Institution. The field party, led by Sibley, collected and made observations on vascular plants, fish, reptiles, mammals, and birds. All islands with the exception of the northern two-thirds of Nake were visited. Prior knowledge of the biota of Caroline Atoll is very scant, deriving almost entirely from the visits of F. D. Bennett in 1835, Devoy in 1875, and the U.S.S. Hartford in 1883.
Satawal is a small flat coral island in the west central Caroline Islands about 1050 km east-south-east of Yap Island, at latitude 7'21' N, longitude 147'02' E. Although its surface is locally somewhat irregular, its greatest height is not more than about 4 meters above mean low water. Its long axis is about east-west and its area is 1.3 square km. It is surrounded by a fringing reef upward of 100 meters wide. It has no lagoon, so would be classified according to Tayama's scheme as a table reef. From the viewpoint of land ecology it is an atoll.
Fais (Tromelin) is an elevated coral island, surrounded by interrupted cliffs 15-20 meters high, lying some 140 miles east of Yap Island, at latitude 9'46' N, longitude 140'31' E in the western Caroline Islands. It has an area of 2.8 square km, and has a population of about 300 people, Micronesians, speaking a dialect of the Ulithi-Woleai tongue. As with many such raised coral islands, valuable calcium phosphate deposits occur on Fais, the greater portion of which was removed and exported during the period of Japanese rule (1914-1945).
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Rangiroa is the largest atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago, and since the institution of a regular air service, the most accessible; yet in common with other Tuamotuan atolls it has rarely been visited by scientists and is barely mentioned in the literature. Dana (1849) published brief notes following the Wilkes Expedition; but the only full account is that by Agassiz (1903). Agassiz's descriptions are, however, verbose and imprecise, and marred by misinterpretations of major atoll features.
Although ornithological observations have not been the main object of any pliase of our work on the Northern Marshall Islands, numerous notes on birds have accumulated which are here placed on record, The birds were identified by use of Ernst Mayr's "Birds of the Southwest Pacific!' and the names used here are mostly those accepted by Mayr in that work. UnIortunately it was impractical to document these records with specin?ens. The sight observations presented should therefore be acceprcd with some reservations.
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Call Number: [EL]
The Gilbert Islands are a part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Crown Colony of Great Britain. They lie in the Pacific Ocean directly southeast of the Ilarshall Islands and are located between the parallels of g045' S. and 3'30' N. latitude, and the meridians of 1720301 E. and 177 15' E. longitude. All of the islands in this groui3 are low islands related to atolls. They are inhabited by Micronesian and Melanesian people who are greatly dependent on materials from the sea for food.
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Call Number: [EL]
During October and November of 1961, the Marine Physical Laboratory of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in cooperation with the British Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, sponsored a series of geophysical measurements on Christmas Island. Continuous recordings of the earth's magnetic field were made simultaneously at various points on the island under the direction of Ronald G. Mason and John Northrop of the Marine Physical Laboratory of the University of California, San Diego.
During the period of April 11-14, 1962, the second author conducted an entomological survey of Christmas Island under the auspices of the Plant Quarantine Division, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture. In addition to the insect collections, 18 species of vascular plants were collected, and six additional cultivated ones were observed
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Call Number: [EL]
Physical Description: 8 Pages
This report has benefited from the inputs of hundreds of individuals, a list far too numerous to include in its entirety. These individuals volunteered their time to support this effort, and to that we are deeply indebted. We want to thank them all knowing full well that this task is not feasible..
Call Number: [EL]
ISBN/ISSN: 978-2-8317-1030-3
Physical Description: 43 p. ; 29 cm
Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are heavily dependent on natural resources and likely to remain so for the near future, making resource management an issue of critical importance for economic development. This chapter employs a simple neoclassical
growth model to diagnose deficiencies in current policy regimes and suggest possible alternatives. Current practices in the exploitation of the regions mineral, tuna, and forest resources are used to illustrate problems and suggest possible policy interventions.
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Call Number: [EL]
More than 20 cetacean species are known to exist in the
Pacific Islands Region, which encompasses the U.S. Exclusive
Economic Zone, or EEZ (waters out to 370 km from shore) around
the entire Hawaiian Archipelago. Johnston Atoll. Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll. Baker and Howland Islands. Jarvis Island. American Samoa. Wake Island, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands, totaling some 5.8 million km2 of ocean.
Many of the species present are poorly studied throughout their
Papua New Guinea (PNG) hosts some of the world's largest and
last remaining intact forest landscapes. While these forests have always been a haven for biodiversity and provided a livelihood for the millions of people who live in them, it is only in recent years that their importance for carbon storage has come to be fully appreciated.
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Call Number: [EL]
Physical Description: 32 p.