Oceanic Islands

Abstract

Those of us who live close to the edges of the world's continents are likely to be familiar with islands, often as places for recreation or retreat. In the past, they were sometimes places of refuge for people or other biota escaping continental calamities ranging from warfare to ice advance. In a geological sense, such islands are commonly slivers of continent, their connections drowned by the high-sea-level conditions in which we live today. Oceanic islands are quite different, often smaller and more remote, and to find them, the continental dweller generally has to travel much farther offshore, into the hearts of the ocean basins.