Where Is Cook Island Located?
Trying to pin down the location of Cook Island is more difficult than pulling out an atlas and looking through the index. It's not that Cook Island is hard to find--it's just that there is more than one. In fact, there are three places in the world called Cook Island, and one group of islands called the Cook Islands. So the question to ask before asking 'Where is Cook Island?' is 'Which Cook Island?'
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Cook Island in the South Sandwich Islands
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The South Sandwich Islands, along with South Georgia, are a territory of the United Kingdom. Argentina also claims the islands, and briefly occupied them in 1982. The islands are located in the south Atlantic Ocean east of the southern tip of South America. Cook Island is one of the two southernmost islands, and like all of the South Sandwich Islands, is uninhabited. The islands are of volcanic origin, and mostly covered in snow or ice. This is the only Cook Island in the Atlantic Ocean.
Cook Island in New South Wales
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An island off the coast of Australia, this Cook Island is about 650 yards offshore of the mainland, near the northeastern corner of the state of New South Wales. The island is under New South Wales jurisdiction, and is a nature reserve and an aquatic reserve, protected by the state's Department of Environment, Climate Change, and Water. It is a small island, about eleven acres altogether. The aquatic reserve protects the island reef's marine biodiversity, making the island popular with local swimmers and divers.
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Cook Island in the South Pacific
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The third island called Cook Island is a very small island in the south Pacific Ocean, only about 800 miles above the group of islands that make up the Cook Islands, plural. The island is part of the Kiribati chain of islands, and is the habitat for more than eighteen varieties of seabird. Visits to the island are overseen by the local Wildlife Service, and require a permit and a guide.
Cook Islands, New Zealand
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The Cook Islands are not really a part of New Zealand--they were a protectorate of the British Empire until 1900, and then of New Zealand until 1965, when the islands' residents decided to be self-governing, in free association with New Zealand. The group of 15 islands sits north of New Zealand, about halfway between it and Hawaii, and most references to Cook Island or Cook Islands are probably to here. The Southern Cook Islands are lush and tropical--tourism is the main industry on the islands, and black pearls are the main export.
Why So Many Cook Islands?
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All four of these island (or island groups) were named after the same man: Captain James Cook, the renowned British explorer. Cook was also a navigator and a cartographer, and he traveled extensively, especially in the South Pacific. Cook claimed a great deal of land for the British Empire, and though the empire has faded and most of the colonies have reverted to possession by the indigenous people, Cook's name still remains, a reminder of his travels and conquests.
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