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Relics, research and ice reveal Alexander Island as a layered archive
Long before most people ever see it on a map, Alexander Island exists as a problem of scale. It lies off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, divided from that mainland by George VI Sound, and yet it is so large that calling it an island can feel almost misleading. At roughly 390 kilometers…
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Storms return, but Gardner Island keeps an uneasy calm
Names can drift far from the places they once marked, and few islands show that more clearly than Gardner Island, the low coral atoll now officially known as Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati. It lies deep in the central Pacific, roughly southeast of Howland Island, a narrow ring of land around a lagoon,…
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Wind-carved cliffs and endemic orchids crown Clarion Island
Few places look so final on a chart and yet belong so unmistakably to a living nation. Clarion Island lies alone in the Pacific, the westernmost and most remote of Mexico’s Revillagigedo Islands, more than 700 kilometers from the mainland. It is uninhabited, difficult to approach, and seldom seen except by naval patrols, researchers, and…
