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Hawaiian Islands
A volcanic chain in the central Pacific, the most isolated archipelago on Earth
In the middle of the world's largest ocean, thousands of kilometres from any continent, rises a chain of volcanic islands of extraordinary beauty and isolation. The Hawaiian Islands are the most remote major island group on the planet, a string of peaks built by a hotspot beneath the Pacific. From the still-growing volcanoes of the Big Island to the eroded green cathedrals of Kauai, the archipelago is a textbook of volcanic life cycles and a haven of species found nowhere else, all set amid some of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth.
The main Hawaiian Islands cover roughly 16,600 square kilometres, the visible summits of immense volcanoes that climb from the deep seafloor. Their highest point, Mauna Kea on the Big Island, reaches 4,205 metres above the sea, but measured from its base on the ocean floor it stands taller than Mount Everest. The islands sit over a fixed mantle plume, and as the Pacific plate drifts northwest, it carries each volcano off the hotspot to age and erode, so the chain grows steadily younger toward the southeast, where Kilauea and Mauna Loa still actively erupt. Their isolation produced a flora and fauna of astonishing endemism.
Polynesian voyagers reached Hawaii more than a thousand years ago, navigating across open ocean by stars and swells to settle the islands and build a sophisticated society of chiefdoms unified into a kingdom by the late eighteenth century. American annexation in 1898 and statehood in 1959 folded Hawaii into the United States, but its Native Hawaiian culture, language and traditions endure and have undergone a powerful revival. Today the islands balance tourism, military bases and a fragile environment, while their summits, with skies among the clearest on Earth, host some of the world's most important astronomical observatories.