Minami-Torishima

Minami-Torishima
1987 aerial photo
Waters	Pacific Ocean
Geographical location	24 ° 17 '18 "  N , 153 ° 58' 52"  E Coordinates: 24 ° 17 '18 "  N , 153 ° 58' 52"  E
length	1.5 km
width	1.5 km
surface	1.52 km²
Highest elevation	9  m
Map of Minami-Torishima

The Minami-Torishima ( Japanese 南 鳥島 ; literally: "southern bird island"), also called Marcus Island ( Marcus Island ), is a Japanese coral island in the Pacific Ocean .

geography

Minami-Torishima has a triangular shape and is about 1.52 km² in size. It is the easternmost part of Japan, located about 1848 km east of Tokyo . The nearest island is Farallon de Pajaros in the Northern Mariana Islands , 1021 km southwest.

The island is flat and hardly overgrown. The highest point is nine meters high and is near East Point . Much of the surface is littered with scrap metal and concrete from WWII . Today there is a weather station there, the 213 m high LORAN-C transmitter mast Minami-Torishima (until 1985 the mast with a height of 411.48 m was one of the tallest structures in Japan) and a runway with a non-directional radio beacon .

The best anchorage is south at 60 m depth, 0.25 Nm away. A 20 m long jetty pier is located within the reef.

Administratively it belongs to the municipality of Ogasawara or the Ogasawara Islands and thus to the Tokyo Prefecture .

The island is as Marcus Island its name to the Marcus-Necker-back , one -ocean ridges , in the western area it is located.

climate

All year round, easterly winds of around 14 kn prevail, in summer a little weaker. The average temperature is 26 ° C, values ​​between 16 and 36 degrees were measured. It rains regularly, but only about 1000 mm per year. There can be fog in September and October.

There are repeated earthquakes in the region - most recently on New Year's Day 2012 with a magnitude of 7.0.

Minami-Torishima
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.     92   24 20th     44   24 19th     56   25th 20th     66   27 22nd     78   29 24     71   30th 25th     183   31 26th     167   31 26th     119   31 26th     98   30th 26th     77   28 24     102   26th 22nd Temperature in ° C ,  precipitation in mm Source: wetterkontor.de

Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Minami-Torishima Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 24.3 24.0 24.8 26.7 28.6 30.4 30.9 30.5 30.6 29.9 28.4 26.2 O 28 Min. Temperature (° C) 19.9 19.1 19.7 21.8 23.5 25.1 25.6 25.5 25.8 25.5 24.4 22.1 O 23.2 Precipitation ( mm ) 92 44 56 66 78 71 183 167 119 98 77 102 Σ 1,153 Hours of sunshine ( h / d ) 5.0 6.2 7.2 8.0 9.1 9.7 8.6 8.4 8.5 7.9 6.9 5.4 O 7.6 Humidity ( % ) 71 70 74 79 79 77 78 80 79 79 78 76 O 76.7 Source: wetterkontor.de

history

An initial inspection by Andrés de Arriola, assumed for the year 1694, cannot be proven. In 1864 the island was sighted by the Morning Star under Captain Charles W. Gelett, and in 1874 by the American research ship USS Tuscarora under Captain Belknap.

Air raid in August 1943

The first landing on the (probably previously uninhabited) island took place in 1879 by the Japanese under the direction of Saitō Kiozaemon. In 1884 the French warship Eclaireur determined the geographical position.

On December 3, 1896, Mizutani Shinroku explored the island and decided to mine guano there . He returned to Minami-Torishima on December 28th with 23 workers. On July 19, 1898, Japan took possession of the island.

Over 4,000 Japanese soldiers were stationed on the island during World War II. In 1942 and 1943 it was attacked by US carrier combat groups, but was initially not occupied. In 1945 the island was occupied by US troops and initially administered by the United States after the end of the war.

In 1964 the United States Coast Guard put the LORAN-C transmitter mast Minami-Torishima into operation. In 1968 the island was returned to Japan. The Coast Guard handed over its Loran-C station to a Japanese unit in 1994.

Economical meaning

In 2012, Japanese geologists found an important reservoir of rare earths off the island at a depth of around 5800 m , which according to initial reports is estimated at 6.8 million tons and, according to rough calculations, would be sufficient to supply Japanese industry for the next 230 years.

According to a study published in Nature in April 2018 , the amount of rare earths in the sea mud off the island is estimated at 12 million tons, which will meet the global demand for yttrium for 62 years, europium for 47 years, terbium for 32 years and Would cover dysprosium for 56 years.

See also

• Okinotorishima

literature

• William A. Bryan: A monograph of Marcus Island . in: Occasional papers of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum . Vol. 2, No. 1; 1903 ( online )
• Nagahisa Kuroda: Report on a trip to Marcus Island, with notes on the birds . in: Pacific science , Vol. 8, No. 1; 1954
• Rodrigue Lévesque: The odyssey of Captain Arriola and his discovery of Marcus Island in 1694 . in: Journal of Pacific history , Vol. 32, No. 2; 1997, pp. 229-233
• PUB 158 Japan Volume 1, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Bethesda, Maryland [2]
• Shoichi F. Sakagami: An ecological perspective of Marcus Island, with special reference to land animals . in: Pacific science , Vol. 15, No. 1; 1961
• Bernhard Welsch: The asserted discovery of Marcus Island in 1694 . in: Journal of Pacific history , Vol. 36, No. 1; 2001, pp. 105-115
• Bernhard Welsch: What Marcus Island discovered by Bernardo de la Torre in 1543? . in: Journal of Pacific history , Vol. 39, No. 1; 2004, pp. 109-122

Web links

Commons : Minami Torishima  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Minami Torishima Info and Pictures ( Memento from January 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
• Marcus Island tides, sunrise and sunset
• Map and aerial photo ( Memento from February 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 島 面積 . (PDF; 144 kB) (No longer available online.) Kokudo Chiriin , October 1, 2014, archived from the original on April 2, 2015 ; Retrieved July 29, 2016 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Peak excavator: Minami Tori Shima High Point, Japan
3. ↑ dpa / dapd / wos: Magnitude 7.0: Severe earthquake shakes Japan. In: welt.de . January 1, 2012, accessed October 7, 2018 . 
4. ↑ See the article in the Journal of Pacific History , Volume 36, No. 1; 2001, pp. 105-115.
5. ↑ FAZ of March 28, 2013, Christian Geinitz, Franz Nestler, Industriemetalle, Japan discovers rare earths in its waters [1]
6. ↑ Yutaro Takaya, Kazutaka Yasukawa, Takehiro Kawasaki, Koichiro Fujinaga, Junichiro Ohta, Yoichi Usui, Kentaro Nakamura, Jun-Ichi Kimura, Qing Chang, Morihisa Hamada, Gjergj Dodbiba, Tatsuo Nozaki, Koichi Iijima, Tomohiro Morisuki, Tomohiro Morisahara , Takao Ichimura, Masaki Kitazume, Toyohisa Fujita, Yasuhiro Kato: The tremendous potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth elements . In: Nature Scientific Reports . tape 8 , no. 1 , April 10, 2018, ISSN  2045-2322 , doi : 10.1038 / s41598-018-23948-5 , PMID 29636486 , PMC 5893572 (free full text) - ( nature.com [accessed April 24, 2018]).