Henderson Island is the most polluted uninhabited island in the world. Henderson Island - the trashiest place in the world Where is Henderson Island located?
Henderson Island is a remote and inaccessible island for people to visit; it is completely uninhabited and is located in the South Pacific Ocean, surrounded on all sides by coral reefs. However, it miraculously became the most polluted island in the world.
Henderson Island is a British possession and is the largest of the Pitcairn Islands. In total, the Pitcairn group includes five islands and only one of them, and this is Pitcairn Island, is inhabited by people. Henderson was born thanks to the underwater volcanoes Bounty, Adams and Young, which caused the island to rise above the sea. Although the island is completely uninhabited at the moment, scientists have still found traces of human presence on it, such as rock paintings, tools and human skeletons of people who lived here about a thousand years ago. According to assumptions, Polynesians lived here between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, but there is no scientific confirmation of this yet. The island is visited occasionally by explorers and Pitcairn's dwindling population. Due to its difficult accessibility, since the nearest large massif is more than 5000 km away, Henderson Island is practically not visited by tourists.
The discoverer of the island is Pedro Fernandez Quiros, who accidentally discovered it at the beginning of the 17th century and gave it the name San Juan Baptista. But after two centuries, the ship Hercules moored to the shores of the island under the leadership of Captain Henderson, who named it in his honor. Since then, this name has been firmly attached to the island, where today valuable types of wood grow, souvenirs from which are valued all over the world. In addition, due to its remote location from civilization, nature has been preserved to this day in its original form, with endemic species of plants and birds, making it an excellent platform for studying the processes of long-term evolution. In 1988, it was even included in the list of protected World Natural Heritage sites under the auspices of UNESCO.
But nevertheless, instead of delighting humanity with its unique flora and fauna and clean untouched sandy beaches, its shores are strewn with plastic and glass bottles, plastic bags, lids, nets, buckets and other garbage, most of it plastic. It is estimated that there are about 38 million pieces of plastic weighing 18,000 kg scattered along the Henderson Island waterfront. Moreover, most of the garbage is buried under a layer of sand and is not visible at first glance. Waves carry about 3,750 new objects onto a coastal strip up to ten meters wide every day. This puts the island's pollution density at 670 pieces of plastic per square meter, making it the most trashy place in the world.
Moreover, the researchers counted only large garbage, which is more than 2 mm, but even small particles have a negative impact on the inhabitants of the oceans and islands, which, at high temperatures and environmental influences, disintegrate into small particles that are eaten by fish and jellyfish, mistaking them for food. And larger objects, such as caps, lighters, rings from plastic bottles end up in the food of seabirds, animals and reptiles; their bodies are unable to digest this garbage, which leads to their death. According to researchers, this plastic debris threatens 200 species of animals, including 55% of seabirds, including two species found on Henderson.
All this garbage comes to the island from the world's oceans; the fact is that Henderson is located right in the path of a powerful ocean current called the South Pacific Gyre. And as a result, all the garbage that is thrown into the ocean on the west coast of South America and Australia ends up in the gyre flow, collecting garbage from the South Pacific Ocean and distant continents, bringing it to the Henderson coast, which stands in its way. In addition to Henderson Island, this phenomenon occurs in the northern hemisphere, where all the plastic from all over the North Pacific Ocean ends up on Kamilo Beach in the Hawaiian Islands.
Remote Henderson Island is a tiny dot in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies approximately halfway between New Zealand and Chile. This is one of the four islands that make up the Pitcairn group. Pitcairn is the only inhabited island in the group, having been settled centuries ago by escaped rebels. No one lives on Henderson Island except for occasional visiting scientists and Pitcairn's dwindling population. There are virtually no tourists here, and the nearest major landmass is more than 5,000 kilometers away.
Henderson Island is completely untouched by human influence. However, what should be pristine sandy beaches are littered with fishing nets, plastic bottles and other such rubbish. Researchers estimate that about 38 million pieces of plastic weighing 18,000 kg are scattered along the island's waterfront. Most of the debris (approximately 70 percent) is not even visible, because... buried under a layer of sand.
Each square meter of Henderson beach has between 20 and 670 pieces of plastic on the surface, and between 50 and 4,500 pieces buried in the top 10 centimeters of sand. About 3,750 new pieces of trash wash up on the island's northern beach every day. If these estimates are correct, Henderson Island may have the highest density of plastic pollution recorded anywhere in the world. The essence of this process is described in more detail in our article about a garbage island in the Pacific Ocean, which I strongly advise you to read.
Where does all this garbage come from? The source is a giant plastic soup called the world's oceans. Henderson Island is located on the edge of the South Pacific Ocean, a large rotating ocean current that circulates between Australia and South America and is bounded by the equator. The gyre's rotating current collects debris from the South Pacific and distant continents, depositing it on Henderson's shores. A similar phenomenon is observed in the northern hemisphere, where plastic from around the North Pacific Ocean washes up on Kamilo Beach in Hawaii.
Jennifer Lavers from the University of Tasmania led the study and traced the source of the debris on Henderson Island to 24 different countries from all continents. Once the plastic lands on the island, irradiation from the sun's ultraviolet rays makes the plastic brittle and it breaks into hundreds, or even thousands, of pieces. Some are less than 2 millimeters in diameter. Microplastic particles burrow into the sand and become a permanent part of the island. In the collection you can learn more about the harm it causes to the ecosystem.
Surprisingly, the entire Henderson Island was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1988. The UNESCO website still describes the island as "one of the few atolls in the world whose ecology is virtually untouched by human presence."
Henderson Island is a small uninhabited piece of land in the vast Pacific Ocean. Henderson is a difficult-to-reach territory, so it is rarely visited by people - for example, to reach this island, a ship from New Zealand needs to sail 13 days.
However, the history of Henderson Island cannot be called boring: one of the main mysteries of modern archeology is associated with it. Researchers have discovered here the burials of people of unknown origin who lived on the island about a thousand years ago, and numerous petroglyphs.
It remains a mystery who these people were and how, with such primitive navigation, they managed to reach an island remote from the mainland.
The first European to discover this land was the Spaniard Petro Fernandez de Quiros, and the island appeared on geographical maps of the world only in 1819 thanks to the captain of the East India Company named Henderson.
In subsequent years, many interesting events were associated with this small island. In 1820, the sailors of the sunken ship "Essex" found their salvation here, and closer to the present, one of the US millionaires offered to rent the island and build a runway on it. But environmental organizations decided to leave the island untouched in order to save its unique flora and fauna.
But no one could have imagined that today the island, along with all its unique flora and fauna, would be brought to the brink of an environmental disaster. Back in 2015, ecology professor Jennifer Lavers visited the island to study it. But during the 4 months spent on the island, the ecologists did not manage to feel separated from the outside world. The fact is that Henderson is located right in the path of a powerful ocean current called the South Pacific Gyre. As a result, all the garbage that is thrown into the ocean on the west coast of South America “bumps” into Henderson and is washed up on its shore in waves.
Shocked by the environmental situation in 2015, Jennifer Lavers and her team decided to repeat the trip to the island in 2017. The results of their new study show that pollution on Henderson Island continues to increase, with a pollution rate of 671 objects per square meter. This value is a record and puts Henderson Island in first place for pollution among all areas that are not official landfills. It turns out that the most trashy place in the world is on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
There are currently more than 37.5 million individual pieces of trash on Henderson Island, which collectively weigh more than 17.6 tons. Every day the amount of garbage on the island increases, and experts do not see any prerequisites for improving the situation.
In the South Pacific Ocean, Henderson Island is inaccessible and uninhabited, surrounded on all sides by coral reefs. This atoll belongs to the possessions of Great Britain and is one of the largest among the five Pitcairn Islands. Among the distinctive features of Henderson are low-fertility soils with high levels of lime and phosphate deposits, many fragile slopes that literally “give away from under your feet” and an abundance of thorny bushes in the center of the island.
Henderson Island owes its appearance to the eruptions of underwater volcanoes Bounty, Adams and Young, during which it rose above sea level. Despite its remoteness and uninhabitation, traces of human presence were discovered in the caves of the island, such as rock paintings, tools and, in fact, human skeletons. There is an assumption that Polynesians lived here between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, but there is no exact confirmation of this theory to this day.
The discoverer of the island is Pedro Fernandez Quiros, who accidentally discovered it at the beginning of the 17th century and gave it the name San Juan Baptista. But after two centuries, the ship Hercules moored to the shores of the island under the leadership of Captain Henderson, who, without hesitation, named it in his honor. Since then, this name has been firmly attached to the island, where today valuable types of wood grow, souvenirs from which are valued all over the world.
Thanks to its remote location from civilization and complete non-interference by humans, the island has preserved its pristine nature with endemic species of plants and birds. In 1988, it was included in the list of protected World Natural Heritage sites under the auspices of UNESCO.
The first European to see the island was Pedro Fernandez Quiros on January 29, 1606. He gave it the name San Juan Baptista (St. John the Baptist, Spanish. San Joao Baptista). On January 17, 1819, the island was rediscovered by the British East India Company's Hercules, led by Captain Henderson, after whom the island was named. On March 2, 1819, the Elizabeth ship, captained by Captain Henry King, stopped on the island. His team carved the ship's name into a tree and for several years the island bore a double name.
Once a year, Pitcairn residents come to the island to harvest trees of the species Thespesia populnea and Cordia subcordata. They use these trees to make crafts, which provide them with a significant portion of their income.
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Excerpt characterizing Henderson (island)
Anna Mikhailovna instantly understood what was happening, and already bent down to deftly hug the countess at the right moment.- Here's to Boris from me, to sew a uniform...
Anna Mikhailovna was already hugging her and crying. The Countess cried too. They cried that they were friends; and that they are good; and that they, friends of youth, are busy with such a low subject - money; and that their youth had passed... But the tears of both were pleasant...
Countess Rostova with her daughters and already a large number of guests was sitting in the living room. The Count led the male guests into his office, offering them his hunting collection of Turkish pipes. Occasionally he would go out and ask: has she arrived? They were waiting for Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, nicknamed in society le terrible dragon, [a terrible dragon,] a lady famous not for wealth, not for honors, but for her directness of mind and frank simplicity of manner. Marya Dmitrievna was known by the royal family, all of Moscow and all of St. Petersburg knew her, and both cities, surprised by her, secretly laughed at her rudeness and told jokes about her; nevertheless, everyone without exception respected and feared her.
In the office, full of smoke, there was a conversation about the war, which was declared by the manifesto, about recruitment. No one had read the manifesto yet, but everyone knew about its appearance. The Count sat on the ottoman between two neighbors who were smoking and talking. The count himself did not smoke or speak, but tilting his head, now to one side, now to the other, looked with visible pleasure at those smoking and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he pitted against each other.
One of the speakers was a civilian, with a wrinkled, bilious and shaved thin face, a man already approaching old age, although dressed like the most fashionable young man; he sat with his feet on the ottoman with the air of a domestic man and, throwing amber far into his mouth from the side, impulsively inhaled the smoke and squinted. It was the old bachelor Shinshin, the countess's cousin, an evil tongue, as they said about him in Moscow drawing rooms. He seemed to condescend to his interlocutor. Another, fresh, pink, guards officer, impeccably washed, buttoned up and combed, held amber in the middle of his mouth and lightly pulled out smoke with his pink lips, releasing it in ringlets from his beautiful mouth. This was Lieutenant Berg, an officer of the Semenovsky regiment, with whom Boris rode together in the regiment and with whom Natasha teased Vera, the senior countess, calling Berg her fiancé. The Count sat between them and listened attentively. The most enjoyable activity for the Count, with the exception of the game of Boston, which he loved very much, was the position of listening, especially when he managed to pit two talkative interlocutors against each other.
“Well, of course, father, mon tres honorable [most venerable] Alfons Karlych,” said Shinshin, laughing and combining (which was the peculiarity of his speech) the most popular Russian expressions with refined French phrases. - Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l "etat, [You expect to have income from the treasury,] do you want to receive income from the company?
- No, Pyotr Nikolaich, I just want to show that cavalry has much less benefits against infantry. Now figure out, Pyotr Nikolaich, my situation...
Berg always spoke very precisely, calmly and courteously. His conversation always concerned himself alone; he always remained calmly silent while they were talking about something that had nothing directly to do with him. And he could remain silent in this way for several hours without experiencing or causing the slightest confusion in others. But as soon as the conversation concerned him personally, he began to speak at length and with visible pleasure.
- Consider my position, Pyotr Nikolaich: if I were in the cavalry, I would receive no more than two hundred rubles a third, even with the rank of lieutenant; and now I get two hundred and thirty,” he said with a joyful, pleasant smile, looking at Shinshin and the count, as if it was obvious to him that his success would always be the main goal of the desires of all other people.
“Besides, Pyotr Nikolaich, having joined the guard, I am visible,” Berg continued, “and vacancies in the guards infantry are much more frequent.” Then, figure out for yourself how I could make a living out of two hundred and thirty rubles. “And I’m putting it aside and sending it to my father,” he continued, starting the ring.
“La balance y est... [The balance is established...] A German is threshing a loaf of bread on the butt, comme dit le proverbe, [as the proverb says,] - Shinshin said, shifting the amber to the other side of his mouth and winked at the count.
The Count burst out laughing. Other guests, seeing that Shinshin was talking, came up to listen. Berg, not noticing either ridicule or indifference, continued to talk about how by transferring to the guard he had already won a rank in front of his comrades in the corps, how in wartime a company commander can be killed, and he, remaining senior in the company, can very easily be company commander, and how everyone in the regiment loves him, and how his daddy is pleased with him. Berg apparently enjoyed telling all this, and did not seem to suspect that other people might also have their own interests. But everything he told was so sweetly sedate, the naivety of his young egoism was so obvious that he disarmed his listeners.
- Well, father, you will be in action in both the infantry and the cavalry; “This is what I predict for you,” said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and lowering his legs from the ottoman.
Berg smiled happily. The Count, followed by the guests, went into the living room.
There was that time before a dinner party when the assembled guests do not begin a long conversation in anticipation of the call for appetizers, but at the same time consider it necessary to move and not remain silent in order to show that they are not at all impatient to sit down at the table. The owners glance at the door and occasionally glance at each other. From these glances, guests try to guess who or what else they are waiting for: an important relative who is late, or food that is not yet ripe.
Pierre arrived just before dinner and sat awkwardly in the middle of the living room on the first available chair, blocking everyone's path. The Countess wanted to force him to speak, but he naively looked through his glasses around him, as if looking for someone, and answered all the Countess’s questions in monosyllables. He was shy and alone did not notice it. Most of the guests, who knew his story with the bear, looked curiously at this big, fat and humble man, wondering how such a hulk and modest man could do such a thing to a policeman.