Niue
The isolated and solitary island of Niue is a self-governing territory that exists in free association with New Zealand. It is located in the central south Pacific, lying 480 km to the east of Tonga and a similar distance to the west of the southern Cook Islands. New Zealand is located around 2,400 km to the southwest.
Niue is a raised coral formation that rises through a series of cliffs to an interior plateau of around 70 m in height — making it one of the highest raised coral islands to be found in the Pacific. With an area of 259 km², the island has three terraces, with Mutalau (the highest) at 69 m and the Alofi (the lowest) at 28 m. The interior of Niue is rugged and rocky, descending to a coastline that is often lined with steep cliffs; some parts of the coast are fringed by narrow coral reefs.
In this image of Niue many of the islands man-made features are visible. These include the runway of Hanaan Airport south of the capital Alofi. Alofi itself, can be seen as the area of white dots along the large bay at the bottom left. Running around the island is the circle island road along which several of the islands villages are to be seen. Prominent among these are Liku, Lakepa, Toi and Hikutavake — from right to left along the west and north coasts.
The territorial waters of Niue also include two outlying reefs that contain no permanently dry land: Beverige Reef (lat. -19.994, lon. -167.830) located 225 km to the southeast and Antiope Reef (lat. -18.244, lon. -168.457) located 160 km to the northeast (400 m across and completely submerged with a least depth of 10 m). Sometimes an additional breaking reef known as Haran (or Harans) Reef (lat. -21.543, lon. -168.920) located 281 km south-southeast from Niue and 197 km southwest from Bevrige Reef is said to exist; its existence is likey false and dates from a dubious sighting in the mid 19th Century — all that can be found in this region is a solitary seamount with a least depth of around 1,000 m. The primary importance of these reefs lies in the fact that they considerably extend the EEZ of Niue — to the region of 390,000 km².
Beverige Reef (also spelt Beveridge) consists of a narrow outer reef crest with broad back reef areas that slope gently to a deeper central lagoonal basin. On the western side a single passage connects the lagoon via a shallow sill to the open ocean. Covering an area of some 56 km² the reef measures 9.5 km in length (north to south) with a maximum east to west width of around 7 km. A small sand cay often purported to exist on the reef is not visible in the accompanying image.
image: earth sciences and image analysis laboratory, nasa johnson space center
