Lisianski Island

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View of Lisianski Island

Lisianski Island (Hawaiian: Papa‘āpoho) is one of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, with a land area of 1.5557 km² (384.425 acres) and a maximum elevation of 40 feet above sea level. Honolulu is 905 nautical miles away, to the southeast.

The island is volcanic, and is undergoing a slow process of erosion. A depression is located between two tall sand dunes that is thought to once have been a lagoon like the one on Laysan, its nearest neighbor. For this reason, the island's selected Hawaiian name, Papa‘āpoho, means "island with a depression". Linked to Lisianski are the extensive Neva Shoals, a reef that covers an area much greater than that of the island itself (around 979 km²). Over three-quarters of the Bonin Petrels that nest in Hawaii nest here.

The Island is named after Yuri Feodorovich Lisyansky, an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy. Lisianski was the commanding officer of the sloop-of-war Neva, an exploratory ship which ran aground on the island in 1805. Lisianski reported the Island to be of little interest, except insofar as its surrounding reefs and shoals posed a threat to passing vessels.

In 1890, the North Pacific Phosphate and Fertilizer Company acquired a twenty-year lease on the Island from the Kingdom of Hawaii. Later, in 1909, Lisianski became part of the new Hawaiian Island Bird Reservation established by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Prior to this, there had been concern about the poaching of birds on the Island.

Lisianski Island: Block 1014, Census Tract 114.98, Honolulu County, Hawaii United States Census Bureau
M. Rauzon, Isles of Refuge: Wildlife and History of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2001.