Two United States Navy ships have borne the name Tarawa, after the Pacific atoll that was the scene of a bloody fight in the Pacific War.

Sailors landed on the atoll in the 19th century and attempted to raid the island for tortoises as food ; in 1842, two ships were reported to have taken 1200 of them.

At daybreak, the ships returned and mapped the southeastern half of the atoll, as well as finding the rock that would later be named after La Pérouse.

Radioactive coral debris fell upon ships positioned 35 miles ( 48 km ) from the blast, and the immediate area around the atoll was heavily contaminated for some time.

In addition to military equipment, the United States Navy moved 250 naval vessels to the atoll, including the Pennsylvania, New York, Arkansas, Nevada, Saratoga, Independence, Nagato ( a Japanese battleship ), and the Prinz Eugen ( a German cruiser ) to test the durability of ships to withstand a nuclear impact.

Charles Wilkes called the atoll " Peacock Island " after one of the ships of the expedition.

Hao was the first atoll of the Tuamotus that Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen visited in 1820 on the ships Vostok and Mirni.

The Bassas da India in the Mozambique Channel is named after one of Loronha's ships, the Judia (" Jewess "), which discovered the atoll by running into it in 1506.

In addition, from 1820-1840 the atoll of Diego Garcia in the Chagos became the staging post for slave ships trading between Sumatra, the Seychelles, and the French island of Bourbon, adding a population of Malay slaves into the Chagos gene pool.

The US Navy warship Lexington visited the atoll in late 1915 and advised evacuation of all inhabitants, but the governor, Captain Arnaud, declared that evacuation was not necessary.

Until 1999 the islanders received US $ 180M for continued American use of Kwajalein atoll, US $ 250M in compensation for nuclear testing, and US $ 600M in other payments under the compact.

or Marcus Island is an isolated Japanese coral atoll in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, located some SE of former Tokyo City and east of the closest Japanese island, South Iwo Jima of the Ogasawara Islands, and nearly on a straight line between mainland Tokyo and US ' Wake Island, which is east southeast.

Arno women are renowned for their production of the Kili Bag, a popular handwoven handbag / purse, named after another island in the Marshall Islands ( to which the people of Bikini were eventually relocated as a result of the US nuclear tests that were conducted on their home atoll ).

Since 1971, only the atoll of Diego Garcia is inhabited only by some 3, 000 UK and US military and civilian contracted personnel.

Initial Falcon 1 flights were launched from the US government's Reagan Test Center on the island atoll of Kwajalein in the Pacific Ocean, and represented the first attempt to fly a ground-launched rocket to orbit from that site.

The US Department of Energy, along with the representatives from the government of the Marshall Islands, sends scientists to the atoll for temporary stays to study the island's environment and measure residual levels of radiation.

* Midway atoll US Fish and Wildlife page on the Black Noddy.

On January 6, 2009, President George W. Bush included the atoll as a part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

Aerial overview of the Wake Island atoll, part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

Naval bombardment of Eniwetok began on 17 February, and the 22nd Marine Regiment, commanded by Colonel John T. Walker, landed on Engebi Island, on the north side of the atoll, on 18 February at 08: 44.

Butaritari atoll was the site of the Makin Raid in August 1942, when two companies of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion landed from the submarines USS Argonaut and USS Nautilus, as a feint to draw Japanese attention away from the planned invasion route through the Solomons.

In June 2006, George W. Bush declared the atoll and all other parts of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

The 1st Royal Marine Coast Defence Regiment provided the garrison troops, manning shore batteries and anti-aircraft guns on all six of the atoll ’ s major islands.

This natural atoll was named Ross Atoll by Captain Robert Moresby during his survey of the Maldive Islands, after Captain Daniel Ross of the Bombay Navy, one of the first surveyors of the area, who later became the East India Company's Marine Surveyor General in Calcutta.

In the Admiralty Chart this atoll is named after Sir Charles Malcolm, commander of the Bombay Marine ( renamed the Indian Navy in 1832 ).

Baker Island () is an uninhabited atoll located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean about southwest of Honolulu.

Representatives from the agency visit the island on average once every two years, often coordinating transportation with amateur radio operators or the U. S. Coast Guard to defray the high cost of logistical support required to visit this remote atoll.

It is an uninhabited, roughly circular atoll about in diameter, which corresponds to a total size ( including lagoon ) of.

The atoll consists of ten barren rocky islets, with no vegetation, totalling 0. 2 km² (. 077 sq mi ) in area.

The atoll has long been a maritime hazard and is the site of numerous shipwrecks.

File: Bassas da India atoll map-fr. png | Detailed map.

Clipperton Island ( or ) is an uninhabited coral atoll in the eastern Pacific Ocean, southwest of Mexico and west of Costa Rica, at.

The atoll has been occupied at various times by guano miners, would-be settlers or military personnel, mostly from Mexico, which formerly claimed it until international arbitration awarded it to France in 1931.

The ring-shaped atoll completely encloses a stagnant freshwater lagoon, and is.

By 2003, the Booby colonies on Clipperton boasted 25, 000 Brown Boobies and 112, 000 Masked Boobies, making the atoll the world's second-largest Brown Booby colony, and its largest Masked Booby colony.

This would mean opening up the lagoon by creating a passage in the atoll rim.

Taking into account the economic constraints, the distance from viable markets, and the small size of the atoll, nothing apart from preliminary studies was ever undertaken to carry out this project.

Pigs that had previously inhabited Clipperton had been eradicated prior to this time, though the crewmen reported seeing their skeletons around the atoll.

In 2005, Clipperton's ecosystem was extensively studied for four months by a scientific mission organized by Jean-Louis Étienne, which made a complete inventory of mineral, plant, and animal species found on the atoll, studied algae as deep as 100 m ( 330 ft ) below sea level, and examined the effects of pollution on the island.

North Keeling Island is an atoll consisting of just one C-shaped island, a nearly closed atoll ring with a small opening into the lagoon, about wide, on the east side.

South Keeling Islands is an atoll consisting of 24 individual islets forming an incomplete atoll ring, with a total land area of.

There are about 30 separate reefs and atolls, twelve being wholly submerged or drying only during low tide, and 18 others with a total of about 51 islets and cays ( 18 alone on the atoll Lihou Reef ), some of which are vegetated.

Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean.