Story: Pacific migrations

This photograph was taken by the NASA spacecraft Galileo in 1990 at a distance of 2.6 million kilometres from earth. Viewed from space, the vast size of the Pacific becomes clear – it covers virtually all the visible disc of the earth in this view. Its surface area is greater than the total land area of the earth. Island groups are scattered across it. These groups are not evenly spread – the South and East Pacific is almost exclusively water, while western and central areas around the tropics are home to many island groups.