Atoll Bikini Island

The former island paradise of Bikini Atoll is slowing blooming back to life, 70 years after the United States dropped 23 nuclear bombs on it, including a device in that was 1,times larger than the Hiroshima atom bomb. A team of scientists from Stanford University have been surprised to discover an abundance of marine life apparently thriving in the crater of Bikini Atoll, which was declared a nuclear wasteland after the bombings, with its inhabitants relocated to other islands. Animals studied by scientists in and around the Chernobyl blast showed deformities and mutations, but the Stanford teams initial research suggest the marine life in Bikini may have fared significantly better. Palumbi said to the naked eye the crabs, fish and coral of Bikini Atoll look perfectly normal and healthy, and some of the coral has been around for decades — with evidence it may have begun growing as soon as 10 years after the last bombs were dropped. In a strange way they are protected by the history of this place, the fish populations are better than in some other places because they have been left alone, the sharks are more abundant and the coral are big. It is a remarkable environment, quite odd.

Rising sea levels have destroyed crops in the Marshall Islands and raised concerns about residents' health and safety, according to the Department of the Interior, which has proposed making it easier for displaced Bikini Atoll residents to relocate to the United States or elsewhere. Federal treaties, called compacts of free association, already allow residents of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau to live and work in the United States. The Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs is asking Congress to write a bill to allow the people of Bikini to use existing federal resettlement and relocation money even if they leave the Marshall Islands, officials said Wednesday. Bikinians now are restricted from spending the money outside the Marshall Islands. WWII 70 years later: Truman viewed bomb as 'tragic,' necessary. In , Bikinians were relocated to the Marshall Islands, and the U. The Bikinians were returned to their home in but were evacuated again in because of high levels of radioactive elements found in their bodies.

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. English: Bikini is an atoll in the Marshall Islands. Suomi: Bikini on atolli Marshallinsaarilla. Marshall Islands Bikini Atoll. Pacific Ocean.

The people of Bikini Atoll were moved from their homeland in to make way for the testing of 23 nuclear weapons by the United States government, beginning with the world's fourth atomic detonation. The subsequent half-century exodus of the Bikini people included a 2-y stay on Rongerik Atoll, where near starvation resulted, and a 6-mo sojourn on Kwajalein Atoll, where they lived in tents beside a runway used by the U. In , they were finally relocated to Kili, a small, isolated, acre island owned by the U. Trust Territory government.