Glen Herrin, age 15, of Mesa, Ariz., for his question:
WHERE IS POLYNESIA, MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA?
The islands of the Pacific Ocean are divided into three major groupings called Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. The islands are grouped primarily on the basis of the people who live there since they belong to three quite different types.
Names for the groups come from Greek words. Polynesia means "many islands," Micronesia means "little islands" and Melanesia means "black islands." Those living in Melanesia have dark skins.
Polynesia covers a large triangle of the Pacific region encompassing the Hawaiian Islands in the north, Easter Island on the east and Tonga on the west. Included are the Society Islands and the Cook Islands.
Micronesia includes islands west of the International Date Line and north of the Equator. Included are the Marshall Islands, the Marianas Islands and the Caroline Islands.
All of the Melanesia islands are west of the International Date Line and south of the Equator. They extend to the west to include New Britain and Manus but do not include New Guinea.
The Maori people of New Zealand are Polynesians. Back about 900 A.D. they migrated from the Society Islands, which includes Tahiti. Except for the people who live there, New Zealand doesn't have much in common with other Polynesian islands.
There are more than 2,000 islands in Micronesia, but they are so tiny that their total land area is smaller than New York's Long Island. The islands in this Micronesia group spread out over an area of ocean that is larger than the United States.
Many millions of years ago the southeastern corner of Asia extended out to where Fiji is today. As time passed, the land mass broke up into groups of high islands and became what is now called Melanesia. The "younger" Polynesian islands were made by volcanoes during the past few million years.
The islands of Polynesia are the tops of volcanic mountains that come up from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Because the ocean is so deep, most of these mountain peaks have to be at least three miles high just to become islands.
The big island of Hawaii has the greatest elevations. The island climbs upward from the bottom of the ocean to the twin peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, a height of about 32,000 feet.
The top of Mauna Kea is 13,796 feet above sea level and it is the highest elevation in the mid Pacific. The floor of the ocean on both sides is more than 18,000 feet below sea level.
Many of the Polynesian islands are in the form of chains. The Hawaiian Islands chain is more than 1,600 miles long. These island chains are actually partly submerged ranges of volcanic mountains, only the highest peaks of which come up out of the sea.