Kingman Reef

Today while watching a rerun of the Discovery series Wild Pacific I was amazed by one segment where they focused on the waters surrounding Kingman Reef. 

Check out this National Geographic article An Uneasy Eden about Kingman Reef and don’t miss the photo gallery.

For more quick facts about Kingman Reef and what I thought was an interesting short documentary read more after the jump.

Kingman is a largely submerged, uninhabited triangular shaped reef located in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly half way between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa.  It is the northernmost of the Northern Line Islands and lies 65 kilometers (40 mi) north-north-west of the next closest island (Palmyra Atoll), and about 920 nautical miles (1,700 km) south of Honolulu.

The reef partly encloses a lagoon approximately the size of Manhattan and reaches 73 meters deep. The highest point on the reef is about 1 meter above sea level and wetted or awash most of the time, making Kingman Reef a maritime hazard. It has no natural resources, is uninhabited, and supports no economic activity.

Kingman Reef has the status of an unincorporated U.S. possession of the United States, administered from Washington, DC by the U.S. Department of Interior. The atoll is closed to the public. For statistical purposes, Kingman Reef is grouped as part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. In January 2009, Kingman Reef was designated a marine national monument.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography did a study of the waters around the Line Islands in 2005.  Check out this video podcast series for a summary of their findings.  Ignore the first 1:30 of this video just trust that the rest is interesting.