Tag Archives: Pacific Ocean

I am working on a polar oceanographic problem at the moment, but the beauty of physics is the principles are universal. That means you can end up reading widely. I came across a very interesting paper (to me):

Gaining insight into Clipperton's lagoon hydrology using tritium
2009 paper in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science

Through the joys of open access a PDF of the paper is available on the Ifremer Archimer institutional repository.

Whilst reading the paper I quickly skimmed over the PDF to see if I was on the right track for what I was interested in. It looked good so I went back to the beginning and starting reading in more detail.

Introduction paragraph 1:

"Clipperton island got the reputation of being one of the most obscure, isolated and unpleasant places on earth"

I thought "eh?" I like a bit of unpleasantness but...

So I read on...  The paragraph gives a quick history of the occupation of Clipperton Island. It was first occupied as part of the phosphate mining industry. But it doesn't have a happy history.

"In this tiny tropical hell, many became desperate to leave, convinced that the island was driving them mad. During World War I, the islanders were cut off from the mainland and died little by little from scurvy and malnutrition. The survivors, a handful of women and children, became ruled by a madman (the light keeper) who proclaimed himself “King of Clipperton”, raping whomever he wanted and murdering any who resisted. Eventually, the women killed him, putting his reign of terror to an end. By July 1917, three women and eight children were the only ones alive and were picked up by the USS “Yorktown”. Its last permanent occupation was in 1944/45 when President Roosevelt ordered the US Navy to seize the atoll. Soon after World War II ended and the atoll was abandoned"

Philippe et al 2009.

Scurvy, malnutrition, rape and murder. I don't come across that sort of thing very often in the area of oceanography I research.

Clipperton Island is about 580 nautical miles off the coast of Mexico.

There is a very good Wikipedia page on Clipperton Island. This is quite surprising given that the atoll is only 6 km2 with a maximum elevation of 29m. It seems to be pretty regularly visited by members of the amateur radio community, and there was a private expedition there in 2013.

If you are interested in the Law of the Sea it seems that in December 2010 the French claimed an exclusive economic zone around the island under the provisions of the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS).

That would mean this 6 km2 atoll has given the French a territorial claim of 1.52 × 109 km2 of sea bed in the pacific and the ownership of the resources there.

Not bad for a place that can barely sustain human habitation.

And the stuff in the paper about tritium was pretty good as well.