Mutiny on the Bounty is a tale about the Royal Navy ship Bounty. On April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian led sailors in a mutiny against their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh. So the story goes, the captain was set afloat in a small boat along with crew members who were loyal to him, while the mutineers settled on Pitcairn Island or Tahiti and burned Bounty off Pitcairn to avoid detection.
Today Pitcairn island’s population is about 50 people, including descendants of Fletcher Christian, and the surrounding waters where the Bounty supposedly went down in flames has just become the world’s largest contiguous ocean reserve.
This is great news for the sanctity of the Pacific ocean and its inhabitants.
The Pitcairn Islands is the last remaining British Overseas Territory in the Pacific, made up of four of the most remote islands in the world, situated in the central South Pacific, halfway between New Zealand and South America.
The newly appointed 322,138-square-mile reserve is roughly 3 ½ times the size of the United Kingdom, and home to at least 1,249 species of marine mammals, seabirds and fish.
Sponges image credit, R. Greenway, ENN
Read more at ENN Affiliate, Care2.