Advance planning is particularly necessary for any trip to Kiribati. Examples of this are for hire of limited diving equipment or chartering a boat. Resources throughout are limited or non- existent. The lifestyle of the I-Kiribati is traditional which means requirements for modest swimwear for example should not be ignored.
Time of year permitting there is a great deal of birdlife to see and there are wildlife sanctuaries of some of the islands, including Christmas Island. The latter is the largest coral atoll in the world. Bone fishing is popular and there are apparently no health problems due to the bomb test carried out a half century ago. The battle of Tarawa in World War II took place on the islet of Betio, where many relics of the war can be seen.
The I'Kiribati people are Micronesians but recent archeological evidence indicates that the islands were originally settled by Austronesians thousands of years ago. Around the 14th century A.D. the islands were invaded by Fijians and Tongans. Intermarriage led to a population reasonably homogeneous in appearance and traditions. The first recorded European encounter with Kiribati was by the Spanish explorer Quiros in 1606. By the 1820s all of the islands had been charted. At that time the Russian hydrographer A.I. Krusenstern gave the group the name Gilbert Islands. Until about 1870 many British and American whaling vessels sought sperm whales in Gilbertese waters. Starting in 1850 trading vessels passed through seeking first coconut oil and then copra. In the 1860s black-birders (slave ships) carried off islanders to work on plantations in Peru and later in Fiji Tahiti Hawaii and Australia. Not only did this practice reduce the number of men on the islands it also introduced European diseases such as measles against which the islanders had little resistance. With the people's consent the Ellice groups (now Tuvalu) and the Gilbert Islands became a British protectorate in 1892 in the hope of eradicating slave raids and incessant tribal warfare. In 1900 phosphate was discovered on Ocean Island. A surge of British interest in the area resulted and more islands were placed under the British protectorate. Phosphate was the predominant source of income for Kiribati until 1979 when deposits were exhausted. Japan seized the islands in 1941. On November 21 1943 American forces launched...more
