Aono Raina High Sea

The Aono Raina sea lies around the Line Islands, a chain of coral islands and atolls south of Hawaii stretching some 2,350 kilometres across the central Pacific. Lagoons, reefs and long stretches of open water separate its islands.

Archaeologists have found marae platforms and settlement remains on several islands, some dating to the fourteenth century. They point to earlier Polynesian occupation, lasting for a period that cannot be known.

Captain Cook landed at Kiritimati in 1777, and Edmund Fanning visited Teraina and Tabuaeran in 1798. Many eighteenth-century visitors overlooked evidence of earlier settlement.