Ellis Island the region. The oyster beds remained a major source of food for nearly three centuries. Landfilling to build the railyards of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey eventually obliterated the oyster beds, engulfed one island, and brought the shoreline much closer to the others. During the colonial period, Little Oyster Island was known as Dyre's, then Bucking Island. In the 1760s, after some pirates were hanged from one of the island's scrubby trees, it became known as Gibbet Island. It was acquired by Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker and merchant possibly from Wales, around
Vansittart Island (Tasmania) island by the 1820s. In 1831 George Robinson came to evict the sealers and their families as he wanted to establish an Aboriginal settlement on the island. When the Aboriginal establishment proved unsuccessful the sealers and their families returned to the island. Their community had grown to 28 people by the time Bishop Nixon came to visit in 1854. Most of the original vegetation of the island has been cleared by the use of fire and by bulldozers with chains, destroying many stands of Oyster Bay pine. Recorded breeding seabird and wader species are little penguin, Pacific gull, sooty oystercatcher