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1851 map of Pacific listing colonial names of individual islands. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Australia and the islands of the Pacific have been grouped by geographers into a region called Oceania. [17] [18] It is often used as a quasi-continent, with the Pacific Ocean being the defining characteristic. [19]
The Polynesian Triangle is a geographical region of the Pacific Ocean with Hawaii (Hawaiʻi) (1), New Zealand (Aotearoa) (2) and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) (3) at its corners, but excluding Fiji on its western side. At the center is Tahiti (5), with Samoa (4) to the west.
As defined by the War Department, this consisted of the Pacific Ocean areas which lay south of the Equator between longitude 159° East and 110° West. It included New Zealand, New Caledonia , New Hebrides , Fiji, and most of the Solomon Islands .
Map of the Cook Islands. The Cook Islands are in the South Pacific Ocean, north-east of New Zealand, between American Samoa and French Polynesia. There are 15 major islands spread over 2,200,000 km 2 (850,000 sq mi) of ocean, divided into two distinct groups: the Southern Cook Islands and the Northern Cook Islands of coral atolls. [40]
The assignment orders for Major General Millard Harmon as the Commanding General, Army Forces, South Pacific, dated 7 July 1942, said: [3] "The establishment of the Pacific Ocean Area as an area of United States strategical responsibility under the command of the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, became effective on May 8, 1942.
However, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) considers the entire Gilbert islands group to be in the South Pacific Ocean. [4] Another way to group the Gilbert Islands is according to their former administrative districts, which were known as the Northern, Central, and Southern Gilberts. (Tarawa was once a separate district as well).
Tonga Trench south of the Samoa Islands and north of New Zealand. The 2009 Samoa earthquake and tsunami killed more than 170 people in the Samoa Islands and Tonga. The M8.1 submarine earthquake took place in the region at 06:48:11 local time on September 29, 2009 (17:48:11 UTC, September 29), followed by smaller aftershocks. [27]
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions.It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.