Phoenix Islands travel guide

The Phoenix Islands are a group of eight atolls, plus two submerged coral reefs in the central Pacific Ocean, east of the Gilbert Islands and west of the Line Islands. They are part of Kiribati. During the late 1930s they were the site of the last attempted colonial expansion of the British Empire (the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme). The islands and surrounding areas are home to some 120 species of coral and more than 500 species of fish. Kiribati has announced plans to establish a huge marine park.
The group is uninhabited except for a few families on Kanton (41 people according to the 2005 census). The United States territories Baker Island and Howland Island can be considered northerly outliers of the group, in a geographic sense. Those two are statistically grouped with the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The islands (not including the reefs) have all been claimed by the United States at some point, and many have come under British sovereignty during their history.
At various times, the islands have been considered part of the Gilbert group (once also known as "Kingsmill"), but the name "Phoenix" for this group of islands seems to have been settled on in the 1840s, after the island of that name within the group. Phoenix Island was probably named after one of the several whaleships of that name known to be in the area in the early nineteenth century.
} |- style="background: #FFF;" | Enderbury Island ||align="right"| 5.1 ||align="right"| 0.6 || |- style="background: #FFF;" | Birnie Island ||align="right"| 0.2 ||align="right"| 0.02 || |- style="background: #FFF;" | McKean Island ||align="right"| 0.4 ||align="right"| 0.2 || |- style="background: #FFF;" | Rawaki (Phoenix Island) ||align="right"| 0.5 ||align="right"| 0.5 || |- style="background: #FFF;" | Manra (Sydney Island) ||align="right"| 4.4 ||align="right"| 2.2 || |- style="background: #FFF;" | Orona (Hull Island) ||align="right"| 3.9 ||align="right"| 30 || |- style="background: #FFF;" | Nikumaroro (Gardner Island) ||align="right"| 4.1 ||align="right"| 4 || |- style="background: #CCC;" | Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) ||align="right"| 27.6 ||align="right"| 84.5 || |- | style="background: #EEE;" colspan="5" align="center"| Submerged coral reefs |- style="background: #FFF;" | Winslow Reef ||align="right"| - ||align="right"| 1 || |- style="background: #FFF;" | Carondelet Reef ||align="right"| - ||align="right"|? || |- | style="background: #EEE;" colspan="5" align="center"| U.S. territories to the north' |- style="background: #FFF;" | Baker Island ||align="right"| 1.6 ||align="right"| - || |- style="background: #FFF;" | Howland Island ||align="right"| 1.8 ||align="right"| - || |- | colspan="5" align="left"| The lagoon areas marked with an asterisk are contained within the island areas of the previous column because they are, unlike in the case of a typical atoll, landlocked bodies of water completely sealed off from the sea. |} (...)...read more more....