Palmyra Atoll

Palmyra Atoll is administered from Washington, D.C., by the Fish and Wildlife Service of the US Department of the Interior. The atoll is partly privately owned and partly federally owned. Travellers are permitted to visit the refuge by private boat in certain circumstances. Visits must have prior approval.
The Kingdom of Hawaii claimed the atoll in 1862, and the US included it among the Hawaiian Islands when it annexed the archipelago in 1898. The Hawaii Statehood Act of 1959 did not include Palmyra Atoll, which is now primarily privately owned by the Nature Conservancy with the rest owned by the US government and managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. These organizations are managing the atoll as a wildlife refuge. The lagoons and surrounding waters within the 12 nm US territorial seas were transferred to the US Fish and Wildlife Service and designated as a National Wildlife Refuge in January 2001. A new international climatology research station began development in 2005.
The high rainfall and resulting lush vegetation make the environment of this atoll unique among the US Pacific Island territories. It supports one of the largest remaining undisturbed stands of Pisonia beach forest in the Pacific.
The atoll is best known for an incident which took place in 1974, when a yachting couple who arrived at the atoll with supplies for a year's vacation, discovered another poorly-provisioned couple (one fleeing a prison sentence), who took their ship and apparently murdered them both. The crime was the subject of a book published in 1991.

Climate

Palmyra is equatorial and hot. It's located within the low pressure area of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) where the northeast and southeast trade winds meet, which has also contributed to its shores being littered with debris carried by Pacific currents. It is extremely wet with between of rainfall each year.

Landscape

Palmyra consists of several low and nearly level sandy coral islands with narrow fringing reef that has developed at the top of a submerged volcanic mountain, rising steeply from the ocean floor. The islands are mostly connected (depending on the tide).

To visit Palmyra Atoll, you are required to get a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

By plane

There is a unpaved airstrip on Cooper Island (the largest island, in the north), owned by the Nature Conservancy.

By boat

There are two moorings in the lagoon just off Cooper Island. The atoll is a 5-7 day sailing trip from Honolulu.

There are a couple of natural sights on this small island; two lagoons, the extensive coral reef and several small sand islets.

• Snorkeling
• Birdwatching
• Wildlife photography
• Fishing is possible but heavily restricted and requires a special permit.

There are no facilities on Palmyra Atoll.

There are no public accommodations on Palmyra Atoll; the limited facilities are for researchers' use only.

Shake out your bedding before you hop in, as brown spiders are known to crawl inside; they are not venomous.

• Jarvis Island
• Tabuaeran (Fanning Island) – the nearest permanently inhabited island; in Kiribati