Mānana


Mānana Island is an uninhabited islet located off Kaupō Beach, near Makapuu at the eastern end of the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands. In the Hawaiian language, mānana means "buoyant". The islet is commonly referred to as Rabbit Island, because its shape as seen from the nearby Oahu shore looks something like a rabbit's head and because it was once inhabited by introduced rabbits. The rabbit colony was established by John Adams Cummins in the 1880s when he ran the nearby Waimānalo plantation.
The rabbits were eradicated about a hundred years later because they were destroying the native ecosystem, an important seabird breeding area.
Mānana is a tuff cone with two vents or craters. The highest point on the islet rises to. The island is long and wide and has an area of about. Mānana's only sand beach is a small storm beach on the west to south-west side of the islet. This sand deposit, located above the reach of the normal waves, is about wide and curves around to the western side of the island.
Manana was formed by the Honolulu Volcanic Series. These series of eruptions are responsible for creating other tuff cones such as Punchbowl Crater.
Mānana is a State Seabird Sanctuary—home to over 10,000 wedge-tailed shearwaters, 80,000 sooty terns, 20,000 brown noddys, 5–10 Bulwer's petrels, and 10–15 red-tailed tropicbirds, and numerous Hawaiian monk seals. It is illegal to land on the islet without permission from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.