Russian Coconut island

I will begin to publish photos from our expeditions at Russian Far East. Today I would like to talk about the island of Moneron. I wonder how many people know where it is and what stands out among the many other islands in Russia.

In fact, I myself learned about this island not so long ago in 2014, when I was at Commanders Islands. I found a man who was there and dived. And all these stories were so unusual that the island did not leave our mind for a long time. I searched the information on the Internet. But it was not much at all. Fortunately, a couple of my fellow divers were there many years ago. But then the island seemed to disappear from the maps.

Until recently, the island remained closed by the administration of the region (why and why this is a separate story). An additional probleme was the fact that in order to get to the island it was necessary to cross the state border twice. The situation began to change only a year ago.

Now the island has a regional national park. The mode of visiting the park is quite tough. You can stay anywhere in the water area of the island, accompanied by a representative of the park. Small houses at photo the place where the inspectors live. We also lived there during our stay on the island.

So what's so unusual about this island? Why it is worth doing a national park there. And what is the connection with the Coconut island that I mentioned in the title? The first is the location of the island. It reaches a part of the tropical current of Kuroshio. Therefore, the water there has a unique transparency for our country. And it is about 15 degrees warmer than in the whole region!

As a consequence, the underwater world is represented by a unique mixture of northern and tropical inhabitants. Many species are found nowhere else in our country. Some of them are listed in the Red Book. From large animals it is for example Steller sea lions. I will certainly tell you about the underwater world of Moneron Island in the following posts.