Birth of an Island

slashmojo writes that while some islands are sinking, last August another rose from the ocean, formed by volcanic activity and caught in the act by a passing yacht. From the article: "What looked like a brown stain on the South Pacific turned out to be a spectacular drift of floating pumice stones stretching more than 16 km — and an indication an island was being born nearby... 'We are getting emails from volcanologists saying this is so rare.'" Here is the blog post of the yachtsman who photographed the nascent island.

Comments

Re:Claim

[BrianH]

Depends on where its at. This particular island lies within the already recognized territorial waters of Tonga, so it belongs to them. Since most new islands would form in volcanic chains with pre-existing atolls and islands, this is likely to be the case the vast majority of the time.

If you did manage to spot an island forming outside of the territorial waters of another nation, the biggest gun rule generally applies. You can claim it yourself and try to create your own nation, but good luck defending it when someone with bigger guns than you decides to grab it. Until you have a settled population on the island, nobody is going to care that some lone nut got kicked off a speck of rock in the middle of the ocean. He who had the biggest guns wins. Until you actually get a population, nobody is going to recognize you as a nation. As a example, the Republic of Minerva was set up in the 1970's on infill located on an unclaimed atoll...basically, a bunch of dirt was piled on an atoll to create an artificial island. Nobody paid much attention to the island or the builders claims, and eventually Tonga sent their army over, evicted the guy, and claimed the island for themselves. Since there was no actual population living on the island, little attention was paid to the "invasion". The people involved in building the island still whine about their claim and call themselves the "government in exile", but without a population to represent or an army to defend themselves, they're little more than a paper organization. The island, as I understand it, was allowed to erode back into the sea. Only a few narrow spits of land ringing the reefs remain.