-
When glaciers relent, Wrangel Island becomes a diplomatic crucible
Long before most people ever saw it, sailors argued over whether it was there at all. In the high Arctic between the East Siberian and Chukchi seas, north of Chukotka and well above the Siberian mainland, Wrangel Island spent decades as a rumor on the horizon: a dark line glimpsed through weather, then lost again…
-
After nuclear tests, Johnston Island charts unexpected ecological revival
Few specks of land have carried a burden as strange as this one: a low coral outpost in the North Pacific, far from any continent, repeatedly remade by military purpose and then left to weather the memory of it. Johnston Island lies roughly 860 miles southwest of Hawaiʻi, part of the United States Minor Outlying…
-
Field notebooks and ice cores unlock the past of Peter I Island
A black volcanic mass rises from the Bellingshausen Sea with the abruptness of something not meant for company. Peter I Island lies off the coast of Antarctica, far from regular shipping lanes and farther still from any ordinary idea of an island as refuge. What appears on a map as a compact shape is, in…
