Восток аралы: Тыныш мұхитының құпиясы

Uninhabited coral island of eastern Kiribati

Vostok Island is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific Ocean, part of the Line Islands belonging to Kiribati. Other names for the island include Anne Island, Bostock Island, Leavitts Island, Reaper Island, Wostock Island or Wostok Island. The island was first sighted in 1820 by the Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, who named the island for his ship Vostok.

Vostok covers a land area of Its nearest neighbors are Flint Island, south southeast; Caroline Atoll (renamed Millennium Island), to the east; and Penrhyn, to the west. It is in length, and is triangular shaped. Beaches on the island range between wide, composed of coral sand and rubble. There is no lagoon or fresh water on the island, and no known freshwater lens. Vostok's major portion is covered with a pure stand of Pisonia trees rooted in moist peat soil one meter thick. These trees, with heights of up to , grow so densely that no other plants can grow beneath them. The island's dense foliage looks dark from when viewed above. This gives the island the appearance of a mysterious black hole when seen on Google Earth which generated speculation in 2021, leading to many to believe that the island is being censored from public view. However this conclusion is easily refuted by other mapping services and publicly available images. The herbs Boerhavia repens and Sesuvium portulacastrum round out the known vegetation. Although coconut seedlings were planted on Vostok in 1922 they failed to grow despite being successfully cultivated on the nearby islands of Caroline and Flint. Vostok formed part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, until becoming a part of newly independent Kiribati in 1979. American claims on the island were vacated in the Treaty of Tarawa in the same year. Vostok Island is designated as the Vostok Island Wildlife Sanctuary. In 2014 the Kiribati government announced the establishment of a 12 nautical mile fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands (Caroline, Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck). Its isolated nature means it is rarely visited, save by the occasional scientist or yachter. Passengers aboard the Golden Princess see it on the ship's route from French Polynesia to Hawaii. Landing is said to be difficult, and no harbor or anchorage exists.