We came across an interesting story about a Tongan islet disappearing. Read more about it here.
To see it in Google Earth, look about 5km North West of Nuku’alofa, Tonga, or fly straight to it with this KML file. Turn on historical imagery to see satellite images of it from 2002 to 2013.
The Tonga islet of Monaufe disappearing as seen in Google Earth historical imagery.
It is not the first Togan islet to disappear. Here is an article from 1913 printed in the Australian paper the Sunday Morning Herald which also mentions an islet in the Tonga group disappearing.
Frank (publisher of Google Earth Blog) visited Tonga in 2010 as part of his ongoing Tahina Expedition and took some nice photos of the coral which you can see on the Tahina Expedition blog here
About Timothy Whitehead
Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.