Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands are far out in the Pacific Ocean.

The islands are flat and sandy. Most are rings of land around a lagoon.

The Marshall Islands are in the central Pacific Ocean, among the easternmost islands of Micronesia. The country has 29 coral atolls and 5 coral islands, with more than 1,200 islands and islets in all, arranged in two chains: Ratak, the Sunrise chain, in the east and Ralik, the Sunset chain, in the west.

Marshallese is the official language, and English is also spoken. The money is the US dollar. The capital is on Majuro Atoll. The 2021 census counted 42,418 people. The photo shows the main road on Majuro.

The two chains lie about 200 km apart and run some 1,300 km (800 miles) from northwest to southeast; together the islands have only about 181 km² of land, scattered over roughly 466,000 km² (180,000 square miles) of ocean. Majuro Atoll is the capital; government offices are in Delap-Uliga-Djarrit (DUD), three islets joined by landfill.

The 2021 census, managed by the Economic Policy, Planning and Statistics Office, counted 42,418 people, a fall from 53,158 in 2011 in which, the office's director said, migration was a major factor. Marshallese is the official language and the language of the Nitijela, the parliament; English is spoken, though by a minority fluently. The photo shows Majuro's main road.

Majuro is where the capital is.

Kwajalein is a giant ring of islands around a huge lagoon.

Most people live on two atolls: Majuro, where the capital is, and Kwajalein. Majuro has a dock for cargo ships, and both Majuro and Kwajalein have international airports. On the other atolls, people live in villages, and ships and small planes link the islands.

Kwajalein is the largest atoll in the world, Britannica says. Its islets add up to only about 16 square kilometers of land, but they circle a lagoon of about 1,700 square kilometers. Many atolls have good places for boats to anchor inside their lagoons.

Majuro and Kwajalein, which offers jobs at a United States missile testing range, together held more than three-fourths of the population in the 2021 census: 23,156 on Majuro Atoll and 9,789 on Kwajalein Atoll. Both have international airports; government ships run scheduled voyages to the outer islands, where people live in traditional villages.

Kwajalein, the largest atoll in the group and, Britannica says, the world, has about 16 km² of land around a lagoon of about 1,700 km² (655 square miles). Ebeye, on Kwajalein, and Majuro have hospitals. In 2010 UNESCO inscribed Bikini Atoll on the World Heritage List as the site of United States nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958.

An atoll is a ring of coral islands.

In the middle is a calm lagoon. Coconut palms and breadfruit trees grow on the sand.

Most of the Marshall Islands are true atolls: an oval coral reef around a lagoon, with small islands strung along the reef. The coral sits on the rims of old volcanoes that rise from the deep ocean floor. No island is more than 6 meters above high tide.

The soil is sandy and not very fertile. Coconut palms, pandanus and breadfruit trees are the main plants. It is warm all year, about 28 °C on average. The south gets much more rain than the north, where some atolls have no people because too little rain falls. The photo shows the Pacific Ocean off Colombia, not these islands.

Nearly all of the 29 atolls are true atolls: irregular, oval reefs enclosing a lagoon, with islets along the reef. The islands are coral caps on the rims of submerged volcanoes, and none rises more than about 6 m above high tide. Soils are sandy and low in fertility; coconut and pandanus palms and breadfruit dominate, and the Ratak islands tend to be more wooded than the Ralik.

The mean annual temperature is about 28 °C. Rainfall rises from 500–800 mm a year in the north to about 4,000 mm (160 inches) in the southern atolls; October and November are the wettest months, and several northern atolls are uninhabited for lack of rain. The photo shows the Pacific Ocean off Nuquí, Colombia, not the Marshall Islands.

The ocean around the islands is full of life.

The country made a law to protect sharks in its waters.

In 2011 the Nitijela, the Marshall Islands' parliament, passed a law ending commercial shark fishing in all of the country's waters, almost 2 million square kilometers of ocean. At the time, the Pew Environment Group called it the world's largest shark sanctuary. The law also made it illegal to sell sharks or shark products, and any shark caught by accident must be set free.

On the outer islands, many families fish, grow coconut, pandanus, breadfruit and taro, and raise pigs and chickens. They also make copra, dried coconut, which ships carry to a coconut-oil plant in Majuro: 7,275 tons in the 2024 fiscal year. The photo shows the Pacific Ocean off Colombia, not these islands.

In October 2011 the Nitijela unanimously ended commercial shark fishing in all 1,990,530 km² of the country's waters, which the Pew Environment Group then called the world's largest shark sanctuary. The law banned the sale of sharks and shark products, set large fines for possessing shark fins, banned the wire leaders used on longlines and required fishing vessels to land their catch in Marshallese ports. It followed a March 2011 moratorium by the Marine Resources Authority.

Britannica describes outer-island life as subsistence farming, fishing and raising pigs and poultry, with coconut, pandanus, breadfruit and taro the major food crops. Copra is still made there: in fiscal 2024 copra makers delivered 7,275 tons to the Tobolar Copra Processing Authority in Majuro, after a record 7,580 tons in 2022 (Marshall Islands Journal, 2025). The photo shows the Pacific Ocean off Colombia, not the Marshall Islands.

Marshallese sailors once steered canoes by feeling the waves.

They learned the waves from maps made of sticks and shells.

The Marshallese are Micronesian people, and most are Christian today. Long ago, the islanders were skilled navigators who made long canoe trips between the atolls. Many atolls are flat and impossible to see from a distance. Navigators learned to feel how ocean swells bend around islands.

They studied this with stick charts: sticks, usually the midribs of palm fronds tied with coconut fiber, showed the swells, and small shells marked islands. Students memorized the charts at home instead of taking them to sea.

The Marshallese are Micronesians; American missionaries arrived in the 1850s, and most people are now Christian. Navigators read the swells, along with stars and bird movements: Hakai Magazine (2015) describes swells bending around land and making a choppy sea that told a navigator where an island lay. Their stick charts came in two broad types, the teaching mattang, showing how waves move around land, and the rebbelib, mapping actual islands and swells; a third type, the medo, covered smaller areas. Use declined, particularly after World War II.

The constitution of 1979 created a president elected by the 33-member Nitijela, with a Council of Iroij (chiefs) advising on traditional law and custom. Majuro is home to the College of the Marshall Islands (1993), which grants certificates and associate degrees.