Isla Salas y Gómez (), also known as Isla Sala y Gómez (; Easter Island Motu Motiro Hiva Marine Park), is a small uninhabited Chilean island in the Pacific Ocean. It is sometimes considered the easternmost point in the Polynesian Triangle. Throughout its history, the island has been largely untouched by humans, due to its diminutive size and remoteness.
Geography
Isla Salas y Gómez is located 3,210 km west of the Chilean mainland, 2,490 km west of Chile's Desventuradas Islands, 3,226 km south of the Galápagos Islands and 391 km east-northeast of Easter Island, the closest landmass. Salas y Gómez consists of two rocks, a smaller one in the west measuring 4 hectares in area (270 meters north–south, 200 meters east–west), and a larger one in the east measuring 11 ha (500 meters north–south, 270 meters east–west), which are connected by a narrow isthmus in the north, averaging approximately 30 meters in width. The total area is approximately 15 hectares (0.15 km<sup>2</sup>), and the total length northwest–southeast is 770 meters. Its highest point, 30 meters above sea level, is in the south of the eastern rock, less than 30 meters from the shore, above a 10 meter high cliff. The highest elevation on the western rock is 26 meters.
The island is showered with salt water, and the shoreline is dotted with countless tidepools. Because the shoreline consists primarily of cliffs, landing on the island is difficult in all but the calmest of conditions.
There are no permanent sources of fresh water on the island, but there is an intermittent rainwater pool in a depression on the eastern rock, which often forms a cache of fresh water 75 meters in diameter. This is essential for the survival of the large population of seabirds.
Even when this area appears dry at the surface, the sand is still moist just a few inches below the surface. This flat sandy area is also the only place on the island suitable for landing helicopters.
In 1994, the Chilean Navy installed an automated beacon and a tsunami warning system. The island has since been declared a nature sanctuary. Between then and 1917, visits are recorded in at least 1805, 1806, 1817, 1825, 1875, and 1917.<br/> ]]
On October 6, 2010, President Sebastián Piñera announced the creation of the 150,000 km<sup>2</sup> Marine Protected Area Parque Marino Sala y Gómez, also called Parque Marino Motu Motiro Hiva.
During the 2008 Deepsea Coral Symposium, Wellington, the idea of a Marine Protected Area on the submarine ridges of Salas y Gomez and Nazca was launched for the very first time. Then, in February 2009, the World Wildlife Fund, WWF Chile, published a scientific revision in the Latin American Journal of Aquatic Research, giving the scientific background that supported the government report for the declaration of the non-take MPA Motu Motiro Hiva.
This declaration follows the efforts of Oceana and National Geographic to both study and highlight the ecological value of this area, and to encourage its protection. These organizations are planning additional expeditions to the area in order to draft a conservation plan, and to propose the widening of the protected area to encompass the whole Exclusive Economic Zone around the island.
Geology
Salas y Gómez is a volcanic island consisting of the summit of a large mountain which rises about 3500 metres from the sea bed. Scott Reef (not to be confused with Scott Reefs off Western Australia), 1.5 km further northeast, is another peak of the same mostly submarine mountain, and has a least depth of 25 meters above it. Salas y Gómez is part of the same Salas y Gómez Ridge as Easter Island to the west, these two locations being the only places where the otherwise submarine mountain range extends above sea level. There are several dozen more seamounts in the range, which extends 2232 km eastward until Nazca Seamount at , where it joins the Nazca Ridge.
Flora
thumb|View of Salas y Gómez in April 1999
Salas y Gómez and Easter Island form a distinct ecoregion, the Rapa Nui subtropical broadleaf forests. However Salas y Gómez is largely barren with no forests and only four species of terrestrial plants; these include Asplenium obtusatum ("spleenwort"), a type of fern which only grows in protected areas at higher elevations.
Fauna
Besides a number of insect species, the only non-aquatic fauna are about a dozen species of seabird, which use the island as a rookery, with the estimated number of adult birds in 1985 (Harrison and Jehl, 1988):
{|class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Species (Polynesian name) !! Scientific name !! Adult birds in 1985
|-
| Christmas shearwater || Puffinus nativitatis || align="right" | 5,000
|-
| Masked booby (Manukena) || Sula dactylatra || align="right" | 3,000
|-
| Brown noddy || Anous stolidus || align="right" | 1,400
|-
| Great frigatebird (Makohe) || Fregata minor || align="right" | 700
|-
| Sooty tern || Onychoprion fuscata || align="right" | 200
|-
| Blue noddy || Procelsterna cerulea || align="right" | 80
|-
| Red-tailed tropicbird (Tevake) || Phaëthon rubricauda || align="right" | 30
|-
| Polynesian (white-throated) storm petrel || Nesofregetta fuliginosa || align="right" | 2
|-
| White tern || Gygis alba || align="right" | 2
|-
| Red-footed booby || Sula sula || align="right" | 2
|-
| Black noddy || Anous minutus || align="right" | 2
|-
| Grey noddy || Procelsterna albivitta || align="right" | 1
|}
Those numbers may vary considerably from year to year, due to weather conditions, and it has been observed that the overall numbers were much lower in 1986.
Marine fauna includes a large number of littoral crustaceans, echinoidea, etc., as well as a large assortment of reef fishes and a number of species of shark, which swimmers report to be "curious", but not aggressive. The lacks of studies has resulted in poor understandings of oceanic fauna of Easter Island and waters in vicinity. However possibilities of undiscovered breeding grounds for humpback, southern blue and pygmy blue whales including Isla Salas y Gómez and the Easter Island have been considered.
Cultural references
Charles Stephenson's book The Face of OO features the island, and the submerged rocks around it, heavily.
Alan Dean Foster referred to the island in his 1971 Cthulhu mythos short story "Some Notes Concerning a Green Box".
Although only passing Salas y Gomez in 1816 and not going ashore, the German poet Adelbert von Chamisso wrote a poem based on his reflections upon the island.
See also
- Desert island
- San Félix y San Ambrosio
- Juan Fernández Islands
References
Further reading
- <small>(in Spanish; also includes volcanoes of Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru)</small>
- Harrison, P.; Jehl, J.R. 1988. Notes on the seabirds of Sala y Gomez. The Condor 90:259-261. https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/condor/v090n01/p0259-p0261.pdf
External links
- National Monuments, Chilean government.
- document with sketch map
- https://web.archive.org/web/20050829152550/http://www.rapanui.co.cl/numero8/syg.htm
- https://web.archive.org/web/20051014224405/http://www.ecole-navale.fr/fr/irenav/cv/poupin/publis/Checklist_Easter_Poupin.pdf
- Adalbert von Chamisso's Salas y Gomez at Gutenberg (in German)
- Parque Marino Salas y Gómez, entry on BlooSee
- Isla o islote Salas y Gómez (spanish)