Nikumaroro, previously known as Kemins Island or Gardner Island, is a part of the Phoenix Islands, Kiribati, in the western Pacific Ocean. It is a remote, elongated, triangular coral atoll with profuse vegetation and a large central marine lagoon. Nikumaroro is about long by wide. Although occupied at various times during the past, the island is uninhabited today.
Kiribati declared the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in 2006, with the park being expanded in 2008. The 425,300-km2 (164,200-mi2) marine reserve contains eight coral atolls including Nikumaroro.
Nikumaroro has notably been the focus of considerable speculation and exploration as a possible location where pilot Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan might have landed in July 1937 when they vanished during their ill-fated flight to circumnavigate the globe. However, to date, although trace artifactualhttps://www.archaeologychannel.org/taraia/documents/2012_Amelia_Earhart_on_Nikumaroro-A_Summary_of_the_Evidence.pdf AMELIA EARHART ON NIKUMARORO: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE, by Thomas F. King, Retrieved: 02 November 2025 and osteologicalhttps://journals.upress.ufl.edu/fa/article/view/525 Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones: A 1941 Analysis versus Modern Quantitative Techniques, by Richard L. Jantz, Retrieved: 02 November 2025 evidence more consistent with the presence of a Euro-American woman castaway on the island than with other known prior inhabitants, or prior castaways,https://www.academia.edu/116114364/A_Lost_Sailor_or_Amelia_Earhart_Lost_Norwich_City_Crewmen_Potential_Sources_of_the_Human_Remains_Discovered_on_Gardner_Island_now_Nikumaroro_Island_in_1940_Kenton_Spading_, by Kenton Spading, Retrieved: 02 November 2025 has emerged, no conclusive evidence of her plane or of Earhart's presence specifically has been found on or in the vicinity of the island.
Features The atoll's rim has two narrow entrances, Tatiman (pronounced as "tasiman" or "taziman") Passage, through which the tide runs, and Baureke Passage, which once held the tide but is now dry, both of which are bordered by a wide fringing reef, which forms a coral beach at low tide. The ocean beyond the reef is very deep, and the only anchorage is at the island's west end, across the reef from the ruins of a mid-20th-century British colonial village named Karake, but this is safe only with the southeast trade winds. Landing has always been difficult and is most often done south of the anchorage. On occasion, visiting larger boats and ships have moored alongside the wreck of the SS Norwich City, which ran aground in 1929.
Geography Thick scrub and Pisonia forest cover the land surface. The trees grow in height and result in decomposing leaf material in the soil. Coconut palms remain from the attempts to operate a plantation on the island from 1893 to 1894 and later from 1938 to 1963.
The scarcity of fresh water on Nikumaroro has proven problematic for residents in the past, and contributed directly to the failure of a British project to colonize the island from 1938 to 1963.
Flora and fauna Nikumaroro's flora and fauna
Nikumaroro is sporadically visited by biologists attracted to its extensive marine and avian ecosystems. The atoll has populations of coconut crabs and migratory birds, and rats abound. Several species of sharks and bottlenose dolphins have been observed in the surrounding waters."Niku IIII summary." TIGHAR via tighar.org. Retrieved: 25 October 2009.w.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Expeditions/NikuV/NikuV.html "Niku V summary." TIGHAR via tighar.org. Retrieved: 25 October 2009.
The island is part of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, and as such, has been named an Important Bird Area,O'Brien, Mark and Sue Waugh. "Important Bird Areas in the Pacific: A Compendium (CD-ROM)." Secretariat of the Pacific Region Environment Programme. Retrieved: 10 December 2010. especially for its breeding colony of red-tailed tropicbirds.
Nikumaroro's reefs The 2000 surveys done by David Obura and colleagues identified that the leeward sites on the reef had 25-40% Live Coral Cover (LCC), in some places exceeding 75% LCC on the shallow reef platforms. Coralline algae, Halimeda and coral rubble were the three other dominant cover categories. The windward sites on the reef had an estimated 70% LCC and the lower cover on the reef slope was 30% LCC. The steep slope was dominated by Halimeda with plates of Porites rus. In contrast to the leeward side, very little loose coral rubble was found with the majority of bare surfaces covered by encrusting coralline algae in shallow water. The most abundant coral species at Nikumaroro included: Acroporidae (staghorn corals); Acropora cytherea; Montipora efflorescens; Favites pentagona; Leptastrea purpurea; Pocillopora verrucosa; Pavona minuta and Pavona varians.
Nikumaroro is in a naturally iron-poor region. The introduction of iron to this environment from shipwrecks and anchor gear is linked to proliferation of turf algae and benthic bacterial communities, and degraded ‘black reefs’. Monitoring from 2000 to 2015 recorded the black reef originating at the 1929 wreck of the SS Norwich City on Nikumaroro progressing northward to sites away.
Pre-history Evidence of prehistoric occupation Little is known of habitation on the island prior to 1824. What evidence there is for pre-historic occupation is slim and unsubstantiated.
In 1989, an expedition to the island by TIGHAR suggested that what they believed to be fish traps on the shore of the island was indeed evidence of long forgotten Pacific natives. Also found by TIGHAR's work party was what was believed to be a basalt adze.Niku I, 1989. TIGHAR.https://tighar.org/wiki/Niku_I_(1989)
Identity of prehistoric peoples The ancient settlements on nearby Manra and Orona Island were probably founded around 1000 BC, when eastern Melanesians are known to have travelled northwards across the water.Suárez, p 17. These have yielded basalt artifacts that originated in Samoa, the Marquesas, and the Cook Islands, and were transported to the Phoenix and Line Islands during the 12th–14th centuries AD.Di Piazza and Pearthree. Voyaging and basalt exchange in the Phoenix and Line archipelagoes: the viewpoint from three mystery islands. Archaeol. Oceania 36 (2001) 146–152 There is evidence to suggest that Howland Island was the site of a prehistoric settlement, which may have extended down to Rawaki, Canton, Manra and Oronaand possibly Nikumaroro. Archaeological sites have been discovered on Manra and Orona that suggest there were two distinct groups of settlers in the area, one from eastern Polynesia, and one from Micronesia.
History 19th-century sightings and claims Nikumaroro was known by sundry names during the early 19th century: Kemins' Island, Kemis Island, Motu Oonga, Motu Oona, and Mary Letitia's Island. The first record of a European sighting was made by Capt. C. Kemiss (or Kemin, Kemish) from the British whaling ship Eliza Ann in 1824. On 19 August 1840, the USS Vincennes of the U.S. Exploring Expedition confirmed its position and recorded the atoll's name as Gardner Island, originally given in 1825 by Joshua Coffin of the Nantucket whaler Ganges. Some sources say the island was named after U.S. Congressman Gideon Gardner, who owned the Ganges.Bryan 1942, p. 71.
In 1856, Nikumaroro was claimed as "Kemins Island" by CA Williams & Co. of New London, Connecticut, under the American Guano Islands Act. No record exists of guano deposits ever being exploited, however. On 28 May 1892, the island was claimed by the United Kingdom during a call by HMS Curacoa. Almost immediately, a licence was granted to Pacific entrepreneur John T. Arundel for planting coconuts. Twenty-nine islanders were settled there and some structures with corrugated iron roofs were constructed, but a severe drought resulted in the failure of this project within a year. In 1916, it was leased to a Captain E.F.H. Allen of the Samoa Shipping Trading Co Ltd, but remained uninhabited until 1938.
SS Norwich City wreck During a storm on 29 November 1929, the SS Norwich City, a large unladen British freighter with a crew of 35 men, ran aground on the reef at the island's northwest corner. A fire broke out in the engine room and all hands abandoned ship in darkness through storm waves across the dangerous coral reef. There were 11 fatalities. The survivors camped near collapsed structures from the abortive Arundel coconut plantation and were rescued after several days on the island. The devastated wreck of the Norwich City was a prominent landmark on the reef for 70 years, although by 2007, only the ship's keel, engine, and two large tanks remained."'Norwich City' photograph and caption." TIGHAR via tighar.org, 2007. Retrieved: 25 October 2009. A Digital Globe satellite image taken 15 November 2016 shows one of the two tanks pushed inland by wave action, and the engine is now gone.
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart attempted her world flight in 1937, but she and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on 2 July 1937 after the plane left Lae, New Guinea, and headed for Howland Island. Nikumaroro Island—then called Gardner Island—is about southeast of Howland Island. During the subsequent search for them and their airplane, the United States Navy checked several nearby islands, and flew over Gardner Island, noting "signs of recent habitation", though they presumed the island was uninhabited. A British exploratory expedition visited Gardner Island in October 1937 but saw nothing. In September 1940, skeletal remains in the form of thirteen bones were found on the island that were believed by its chief administrator, Gerald Gallagher, to be "just possibly that of Amelia Earhardt" (sic). The bones were sent to Fiji, where Dr. D.W. Hoodless prepared a report that stated the bones were that of a male, a "short, stocky, muscular European, or even a half-caste, or person of mixed European descent."
A follow-up report in 2018 by forensic anthropologist Dr. Richard Jantz, who used modern forensic software, stated: "The bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer. Her height is entirely consistent with the bones. The skull measurements are at least suggestive of female...If the bones do not belong to Amelia Earhart, then they are from someone very similar to her.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) made several expeditions to Nikumaroro during the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. TIGHAR archaeologist Thomas King continued the field work with trips to the island in 2015 and 2017, sponsored by Betchart Expeditions. The group investigated the renewed hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan had landed on Gardner Island after they had failed to find Howland Island, and died as castaways.
TIGHAR hypothesized that Nikumaroro might have been the last stop on Earhart's world flight while assembling the catalog of radio messages received in the Pacific and elsewhere in the world during the Earhart search. Robert Brandenburg continued the analysis by using primary-port open-water constants from the U.K. Hydrographic Office to model hypothetical tides from Hull Island for Nikumaroro, using linear regression. He then drew vertical lines through the waves to mark the time of day that various radio signals were received, to correlate the times at which radio messages from Earhart were reported and the height of the tides. This was done to verify, or falsify, that it was possible for Earhart to send distress calls from Nikumaroro.