It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

This is what used to be the island of Jordsand in the Wadden Sea, just off the coast of Denmark, and east of the German island of Sylt.

Once upon a time it may have connected to both the mainland and Sylt, but by 1873 it was down to just 18.4 hectares in size. Attempts to protect the island were made during the 1970s but recurring floods continued to reduce its area and, during the winter of 1998, the little island was finally submerged for good.

Interestingly, the low resolution image used on Google Maps for the more zoomed-out views still shows some small sections of land protruding from the water.

Thanks to Lars Dybdahl.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

The island of Tristan da Cunha and its surrounding archipelago are located in the southern Atlantic ocean, 2816 km from the nearest continent, making it the most remote island in the world!

Tristan da Cunha is a dependency of the British overseas territory Saint Helena, and also a live volcanic island. The main settlement, “Edinburgh of the Seven Seas“¹, had to be temporarily abandoned in 1961 due the volcano erupting.

As Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is 2,400 km from the main settlement on Saint Helena, it chalks up an additional record of the “most remote permanent settlement in the world”.

The other islands in the archipelago include Gough Island, which has a temporary population of 6 South Africans who work at the small weather station…

… and the mysterious sounding Inaccessible Island. Officially uninhabited (presumably for obvious reasons), Inaccessible Island also appears to be inaccessible to high-resolution photography satellites (unlike the rest of the archipelago).

More info on Tristan da Cunha, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and Saint Helena can be found at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Nico, Tom and Matt.