Malden Island importance as a protected area for breeding seabirds. The island is designated as the "Malden Island Wildlife Sanctuary". In 2014 the Kiribati government established a fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands (Caroline (commonly called Millennium), Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck). Malden Island is located south of the equator, south of Honolulu, Hawaii, and more than west of the coast of South America. The nearest land is uninhabited Starbuck Island, to the southwest. The closest inhabited place is Tongareva (Penrhyn Island), to the southwest. The nearest airport is on Kiritimati (Christmas Island), to the northwest. Other nearby
Kiritimati area of Kiribati, a country encompassing 33 Pacific atolls and islands. It lies north of the Equator, south of Honolulu, and from San Francisco. Kiritimati Island is in the world's farthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience the New Year (see also Caroline Atoll, Kiribati). Despite being east of the 180 meridian, a 1995 realignment of the International Date Line by the Republic of Kiribati moved Kiritimati to west of the dateline. Nuclear tests were conducted on and around Kiritimati by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, and by