Flint Island



Flint Island is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific Ocean, part of the Southern Line Islands under the jurisdiction of Kiribati. In 2014 the I-Kiribati government established a 12 nmi exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands (Caroline, Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck) preventing fishing in the surrounding waters.

Geography
Flint Island is located about 740 km northwest of Tahiti, 190 km south-southeast of Vostok Island, and 220 km southwest of Caroline Island. The island is about 2.5 mi long and 0.5 mi wide at its widest point (4 x). It has a land area of 1 sqmi and rises to a height of 25 ft above sea level. The island is surrounded by a narrow fringing reef and with no safe anchorage, landing is difficult.

According to the U.S. Exploring Expedition (February 5, 1841), the island was thickly wooded with primeval forest, however the island is now mostly covered with planted coconut palms.

In the islands interior there are four lakes of brackish water with the largest, Lake Arundel being 168 meters across at its widest. The largest lake is theorized to be the remnant of a lagoon, the southernmost, Lake Chase was an old well that overflowed and the remaining lakes, Lake Mago and Lake Bunya were formed by guano mining. There is an abandoned network of tramways in the islands interior, which connect to Lake Mago and Lake Bunya, as they were formerly the largest guano mining area on the island.

There is a small landing in the north-west of the reef blasted in, which is marked by a 9 meter tall concrete obelisk on the beach.

Flint has been observed to experience much more rainfall than the other line islands, often experiencing weeks of rain at a time.

History
Flint Island was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Ferdinand Magellan on 4 February 1521, and charted as Tiburones (Sharks in Spanish) because of the many sharks that sailors fished in it. Together with Puka-Puka (named San Pablo) they were named Islas Infortunadas (Unfortunate Islands in Spanish). Flint island was rediscovered on April 8, 1809, by the American captain Obed Chase in ship Hope (belonging to Edmund Fanning). On the Island Chase had nailed an American coin to a tree, which would also make him the first known person to have set foot on it. This is likely where the modern name was coined. A now-discredited theory held that the island was named after Captain Keen, who visited in 1835, but an entry in Krusenstern's Hydrographie der grössern Ozeane, published in 1819, makes it clear the island already had this name. Flint Island was claimed under the 1856 U.S. Guano Act, but it was apparently never occupied.

It was leased by the British to Houlder Brothers and Co. of London who carried out guano digging in the central part of the island from 1875 to 1880 under field manager John T. Arundel. From 1881 John T. Arundel & Co. carried on the mining business. The excavated areas have since filled with brackish water, forming two of the four lakes. Coconut palms were planted on the island by Arundel in 1881 and copra was produced until 1891. The island was leased in 1911 to S.R. Maxwell and Co., Ltd. who employed 30 men and one manager to harvest copra from the approximately 30,000 coconut palms. The settlement was abandoned in 1929. Today the coconut palms have taken over 96% of the island and have killed all but few pisonia trees.

On January 3, 1908 a total eclipse of the sun was observed on the island by an expedition from the Lick Observatory in California. The observation point on the island was determined to be at -11.42417°N, -151.80417°W latitude.

On the 11th of August, 1974 there were 5 Tahitian workers still mining Guano, from a temporary camp, but the guano was of very poor quality and rarely actually sold.

Flora and Fauna
During the 1974 Line Islands expedition, it was reported that Flint Island was covered in a dense wild jungle of palm trees. The jungle is moist and makes prime habitation for Emoia Impar, which inhabit most of the island at a density of over 30 per square meter. Sooty Terns, Red-Footed Boobies and Frigatebirds nest in the palm trees around the beaches, and Coconut Crabs live in the fallen trees in the jungle, which made it easier for them to reproduce to cover the island at a density of 1 per square meter, which could potentially give Flint Island the largest population of Coconut Crabs in the world, the other most likely contender would be South Islet in Caroline Atoll.