It came up at the Minton dinner table this evening that Bermuda is the second most isolated island in the world. Hard to believe when New York and Boston are a mere 2 hours away via airway and Miami and Toronto a mere three hour flight.
We did do a little Wikipedia search, but the BBQ beckoned and we abandoned our investigation.
Continuing it at home, these are the facts I came up with:
Bouvet Island, a Norwegian island 994 miles to the south of Antartica is THE most remote island in the world but for some reason they don’t include it as it is uninhabited.
Tristan de Cunha, part of the British Crown Colony of St. Helena, is 1,750 miles from South Africa in the south Atlantic, and is considered the most remote inhabited island.
Bermuda, 640 miles from the USA in the north Atlantic is considered 2nd, but as it consists of more than 130 separate islands, this honour is sometimes disputed.
But…..Tristan de Cunha is an archipelago as well and no one is disputing their placing. Be fair oh thou gods of lists and statistics…or at least be consistent!

Ashley was at dinner tonight…in fact I think he was somewhat the reason for tonight’s impromptu gathering (like we’ve ever needed an excuse) as he and Lecia leave to visit her family in western Canada tomorrow… for a whole two weeks! Holy crap! Must have a BBQ to see them off!! Anyhoooo…he brought a disc of pics from a recent dive out at the tower at Argus Banks (long way off Bermuda) which he described as the Jurassic Park for fish. And yeah, the huge schools of huge fish were certainly impressive. Unfortunately they also captured shots of a few (he said they saw about 6 in total) Lion fish. They have been illegally introduced to local waters recently by disgruntled aquarium owners and have taken a very firm foothold. It’s a shame as they are very predatory fish and detrimental to the fine balance of our reef life, and we are fighting hard to save what is the most environmentally unchanged reef in the world. Elsewhere global warming and shrinking seas are causing reef bleaching. Being the most northern reef in the world, we are still unchanged by this. As yet. Not that the Lion fish are going to affect that, but it is a fine balance out there and any change to the worse is worrying.

Gem: As I swam out through the surf with Lucas on Sunday afternoon, it was quite rough and I battled to jump above each wave crest that I would normally just dive through, wondering all the while if my arms would give out (he’s a very solid 3 year old!), and Lucas was shouting with pure joy.
Then he looked at me with his chubby little grin and said “I am so happy.”
Well, buddy, if you are then so am I. How simple is that?