Guano Islands: Not All Waste Is Worthless Quiz

Answer: fertilizer

Guano is a Spanish word derived from the Quechua "wanu". Originally used in reference to any kind of animal dung employed in agriculture, it has acquired the specialized meaning of accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. However, the guano produced by insectivorous bats is usually found in caves rather than on islands or rocky coastlines.

Guano contains more than 40% organic matter, and is a major source of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus - the three minerals that are essential for plant growth.Though in Europe the fertilizing properties of guano had been known at least since the 16th century, it was only in the 19th century that large-scale exploitation of guano deposits began. The material was also used in the production of gunpowder and other explosives: however, the main reason for the guano boom was guano's pivotal role in the development of intensive farming (hinted at by the photo), which relies on the ready availability of effective fertilizers. This boom led to the human colonization of remote islands in various parts of the world, with severe environmental (and sometimes economic and social) consequences.

Answer: Peru

The catalyst of the beginning of the Guano Age was German polymath Alexander von Humboldt, who in the early 19th century wrote extensively about guano's fertilizing properties after his expedition to South America in 1799-1804. However, the official start of the Age came in 1840, when the Peruvian government negotiated a deal with various foreign business enterprises that allowed guano to be exported worldwide. In the mid-19th century, Peru enjoyed a period of wealth and prosperity due to the vast revenues brought by guano commercialization.

Located 21 km (13 mi) off the southwest coast of Peru, near the town of Pisco, the Chincha Islands are three small, rocky islands made mostly of granite. Large numbers of seabirds nest on the cliffs around the islands, in particular the guanay cormorant (Leucocarbo bougainvilliorum), which - as its common name implies - is the main producer of guano in that part of the world. When industrial guano extraction began in 1840, the dung in some parts of the islands was over 60 m (200 ft) deep. 30 years later, most of the guano had been removed - not before a war between Peru and Spain was fought over the islands in 1864-66.

Nowadays the industry - which has been revived by growing demand for non-synthetic fertilizers - is much more respectful of the environment. The workers, who in the past were mainly prisoners and Chinese indentured servants, now come from the Peruvian highlands. Though previously inhabited by the native Chincha people, the islands have no permanent population. Peru's guano islands, islets and capes, stretching along the coast of the country, are protected by the Peruvian government; the system was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2019.

Answer: Midway Atoll

Named for its location roughly halfway between North America and Asia, Midway Atoll is part of the Hawaiian Archipelago. It is not, however, part of the US state of Hawaii, but rather one of the US Minor Outlying Islands. It is a ring-shaped barrier reef, about 8 km (5 mi) in diameter, containing a number of sand islets, the largest of which - named Sand Island and Eastern Island - are home to millions of seabirds, including various species of albatross, locally called "gooneys". Midway's environment, however, has been substantially altered by human intervention, which poses a constant threat to its fauna.

Discovered in 1859, Midway (called Kuaihelani in Hawaiian) was claimed for the US under the Guano Islands Act, though it is likely that guano was never mined there. Human settlement on the atoll brought invasive plant and animal species. Before WWII, the atoll became a luxury tourist destination for people traveling to the Far East from the US West Coast. However, as tensions between the US and Japan grew, so did Midway's military importance as a refueling stop for planes and ships. The Naval Air Station Midway was in operation from 1941 to 1993. Midway was bombed several times before the pivotal battle that took place in its waters on 4 June 1942. The island was designated as a National Wildlife Refuge in 1988; the WWII facilities had been listed as National Historic Landmark the previous year. Now only about 50 people live on Sand Island - most of them staff of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The three islands listed as wrong answers are also US Minor Outlying Islands located in the central Pacific Ocean.

Answer: Amelia Earhart

Located just north of the Equator, Howland Island is one of the many coral islands that dot the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Covering about 2.6 km² (1 sq mi) with its cucumber-like shape, the island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia. It is part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands, which includes eight insular areas in the Pacific Ocean and one in the Caribbean Sea. Like all coral islands, is very low-lying (as the photo shows), with sandy terrain and no natural fresh water sources. Howland Island is now uninhabited, and managed as a nature reserve by the US Fish and Wildlife Service; it is recognized as an important bird area for the numerous colonies of seabirds it hosts.

The island and neighbouring Baker Island were claimed by the US in 1856 as guano islands, and the resource was mined there for most of the following decades. In the 1930s, a few people settled there, naming their settlement Itascatown. They built a beacon, a few houses, and an airstrip - which Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were searching for when they disappeared on 2 July 1937. Damaged by bombs during WWII, Howard Island was abandoned after 1944; in 1974 it became a National Wildlife Refuge. Rebuilt in the 1960s, the beacon was named Earhart Light.

Answer: Clipperton

Named after John Clipperton, an 18th-century English privateer, Clipperton Island (known in French as Île de la Passion) is an overseas French territory, the only one located in the North Pacific Ocean. This small coral atoll, covering an area of 8.9 km² (3.4 sq mi), and enclosing a stagnant freshwater lagoon, is located 1,080 km (671 mi) southwest of the Pacific coast of Mexico. Though close to the North American continent, it is often considered the easternmost point of Oceania due to the similarities of its marine fauna with that of Hawaii and Kiribati. Clipperton is home to many different species of sea birds, in particular a colony of masked boobies (Sula dactylatra) that counts over 100,000 individuals. The coral reefs that surround the atoll host over 100 endemic species. Not surprisingly, the island's environment has been the object of extensive scientific studies.

Clipperton was claimed by France in 1858 in order to exploit its guano deposits. However, in the late 19th century both the US and Mexico staked their claim on the island; American companies were particularly active in mining guano in the 1890s. A group of people from Mexico established a colony there in 1905, but their attempt at colonizing the island ended tragically in 1917, and Clipperton was abandoned. In 1931, an arbitration formally assigned ownership of the island to France. In 1938, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Clipperton during a fishing trip. He hoped to establish an air base there because of the island's proximity to Panama Canal; however, the island - occupied by US forces during WWII - was eventually abandoned once again. Now uninhabited, Clipperton has become a favourite destination for amateur radio groups.

Molokai is one of the Hawaiian Islands, and Fernandina one of the Galápagos, while Cocos Island lies southwest of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

Answer: Benguela Current

With their low salinity and high content of nutrients, cold oceanic currents help populations of fish and other marine animals to thrive - providing a plentiful and diversified diet to seabirds, which increases the production of high-quality guano. While the Humboldt Current flows along the Pacific coast of South America from Chile to Ecuador, the Benguela Current flows northward from the Cape Peninsula in South Africa to a point off the northern coast of Namibia where it meets the warm Angola Current. The current is named after the city of Benguela in western Angola: the name comes from a local language, and bears no relation to Bengal.

Thirteen small, rocky islands lie off the coast of Namibia between the port city of Walvis Bay and the mouth of the Orange River, on the border with South Africa. Home to one of the world's richest seabird populations, in the 1840s these islands - known collectively as Penguin Islands - became the destination of a large-scale guano rush, which culminated in severe unrest and British military intervention. The guano scraped off the islands' rocks was regarded as the best in the world for its high ammonia and phosphate content. As their name implies, the Penguin Islands are an important breeding site for African penguins (Spheniscus demersus): the photo shows a colony of these birds on Halifax Island.

The Madagascar Current flows in the Indian Ocean, around the coasts of the eponymous island, while the Aleutian Current flows in the North Pacific Ocean from Asia to Alaska.

Answer: Haiti

Located northeast of Jamaica, and 56 km (35 mi) west of Haiti's southwest Tiburon Peninsula, Navassa Island is a small, uninhabited island ringed by a steep, rocky coastline. Its name - given by some members of Christopher Columbus' crew during his fourth voyage (1504) - comes from the Spanish "nava", meaning "field". The island, which mainly consists of coral and limestone, is covered by forest and grassland. It supports breeding colonies of seabirds, in particular red-footed boobies (Sula sula), as well as a large resident population of white-crowned pigeons (Patagioenas leucocephala).

Haiti's claim to Navassa Island goes back to the late 17th century, when the country was a French colony. However, there is no explicit mention of the island in any document from that era, as there is none in Haiti's 1801 constitution. This lack of written evidence allowed the US to lay claim to the island in 1857, the year after the Guano Islands Act was passed. In 1889, at the height of the Guano Age, Navassa was the site of a violent revolt of the guano workers against the poor conditions in which they were forced to work - which eventually caused the mining activity to be drastically scaled down. In 1917, a tall lighthouse, called Navassa Island Light, was built there, but was deactivated in 1996. The island has been uninhabited since the end of WWII: now it is a National Wildlife Refuge, and one of the US Minor Outlying Islands. The dispute with Haiti, however, is still ongoing.

Answer: Bolivia

One of two landlocked countries in South America (the other being Paraguay), known for being home to some of the world's highest cities, Bolivia became independent from Spain in 1825. From that time until 1879, it also had a coastline on the Pacific Ocean, which formed the Department of the Litoral (shown by the map in the photo). However, in spite of treaties signed in 1866 and 1874 that established the borders between the two nations, Chile tried several times to lay claim to Bolivian territory.

By the early 1870s, the guano reserves on the Chincha Islands and other small islands off the coast of Peru were already showing signs of depletion. However, in the same period Chile saltpetre (sodium nitrate) - mainly found in the Atacama Desert, the world's dried desert, then part of Bolivia - had begun to be mined profitably. In 1879, a dispute between Bolivia and Chile over nitrate taxation escalated into a full-blown war, which became known as War of the Pacific or Nitrate War. Though Bolivia had formed a secret alliance with Peru, both countries were eventually defeated by Chile. Peru lost the resource-rich territory of Tarapacá, and Bolivia became landlocked. Bolivians commemorate the loss of the Litoral Department on 23 March of every year, called "Día del Mar" (Day of the Sea). Tensions between Bolivia and Chile over the lost territories are still ongoing.

Answer: Bouvet Island

Bouvet Island is located in the South Atlantic Ocean, at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This volcanic island, one of the world's most remote, is located 1,700 km (1,100 mi) north of the coast of Queen Maud Land, a region of Antarctica also claimed by Norway. Most of its area of 49 km² (19 sq mi) is covered by a permanent ice cap, which also fills the crater of the inactive volcano at the centre of the island. Named after the French sailor and explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, who discovered it in 1793, it was initially claimed by the British Crown in 1825, and then by Norway in 1927. In 1930, following a dispute with the UK, the island officially became a Norwegian dependency with the name of Bouvetøya. In 1971, Bouvet Island was declared a nature reserve.

Though often visited by Norwegian Antarctic expeditions, Bouvet Island has never been permanently inhabited because of its ice cover and steep coastline, which makes landing extremely difficult. To make matters worse, the island is also prone to earthquakes. Temporary research and weather stations have been established there: the most recent of them, sent from Norway in 2012, is structured so as to withstand the island's harsh weather. Though non-animal life is limited to fungi and non-vascular plants, the island offers prime breeding conditions for many seabirds, including over 100,000 penguins; many non-breeding seabird species also regularly visit the island. However, mining guano on a regular basis would be extremely difficult - especially as most of the guano is deposited on top of the ice.

The hand-coloured photo of the southeast coast of Bouvet Island was taken during the German Valdivia expedition in 1898.

Tristan da Cunha and South Georgia, both British overseas territories, are also located in the South Atlantic; Ross Island, claimed by New Zealand, lies off the coast of Antarctica, in MacMurdo Sound.

Answer: Nauru

Though no larger in area than other prominent guano islands (21 km²/8.1 sq mi), Nauru enjoys a higher profile on account of its status as a sovereign country - the world's third-smallest after Vatican City and Monaco, with a population barely over 10,000. Formerly known as Pleasant Island, Nauru is located in Micronesia, 56 km (35 mi) south of the Equator; its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands. Nauru is a phosphate-rock island, with most of the reserves located in the central plateau: these rocks were formed by layers of bird guano accumulated over millennia. The only fertile land on the island is a narrow coastal strip; as there are no rivers nor streams, water needs to be brought from outside, or collected from roof catchment systems.

Settled over 3,000 years ago, Nauru was part of the German Empire from 1888 to 1918: during that time, its rich phosphate deposits were discovered, and exploitation of this resource began. The island gained its independence in 1968; in the following years, Nauruans became among the world's richest people thanks to the income from phosphate mining. This state of affairs, however, did not last long: the phosphate deposits ran out in the 1990s, while decades of strip-mining operations caused immeasurable damage to the island's fragile environment. To offset this loss, Nauru became a tax haven, as well as a detention facility for those seeking asylum in Australia. In recent years, Nauru has trying to kickstart its economy with tourism, though the environmental damage inflicted on the island has nearly destroyed its tropical paradise status.