Gilbert and Ellice Islands French captain Louis Duperrey was the first to map the whole Gilbert Islands archipelago. He commanded "La Coquille" on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825). Funafuti atoll was named Ellice's Island after Edward Ellice, a British politician and merchant, by Captain Arent de Peyster, who sighted the islands in 1819 sailing on the ship "Rebecca". Ellice owned the cargo of the ship. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands, of what is now Tuvalu, after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were formerly designated an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "GE"
Geology of the Pacific Ocean existed. In a remote region of the central Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern section of the Gilbert Islands, a major swarm of intraplate earthquakes occurred between December 1981 and March 1983, with no prior seismicity having been reported in this region previously. Another swarm was detected on the Queen Charlotte Islands fracture zone in August–September 1967. The Pacific Ocean contains several long seamount chains, formed by hotspot volcanism. These include the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, the Tasmantid Seamount Chain, the Lord Howe Seamount Chain and the Louisville Ridge. Geology of the Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean evolved in the Mesozoic from