Atoll expedition in 1897. The third expedition in 1898 was led by Alfred Edmund Finckh. On January 6, 2009, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the creation of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, covering several islands and atolls under U.S. jurisdiction. Atoll An atoll (, , , , or ), sometimes called a coral atoll, is a ring-shaped coral reef including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. The coral of the atoll often sits atop the rim of an extinct seamount or volcano which has
Falkie Atoll Falkie Atoll Falkie Atoll is a small atoll within the nation of Solomon Islands, at . It is sometimes referred to as Van Ren Atoll, named after the Dutch explorer Jale Van Ren who discovered the atoll in 1679. Local name of this atoll is Kaka. Administratively, Falkie Atoll belongs to the Choiseul Province of Solomon Islands. It is the westernmost atoll in the Solomon Islands archipelago, 40 km northwest of Shortland Islands. However, the closest land is Bougainville, which is an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea. Its total land area is , but it encloses a lagoon of