These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'atoll.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Patricia Doherty, Travel + Leisure, 15 Mar.

2021 Set on the atoll, a ring of coral about 36 miles off the southern coast of Belize, Manta Island Resort offers nine private oceanfront cabanas and three two-bedroom villas. 2022 Financial issues and BrandoвЂ™s concerns about damaging the fragile atoll ecosystems kept the project limited in scope: only the airstrip and a dozen rustic bungalows were ultimately built. Jill Lawless, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Apr. 2022 In 2013, Australia began sending asylum-seekers attempting to reach the country by boat to Papua New Guinea and the tiny atoll of Nauru, vowing that none would be allowed to settle in Australia. Outside Online, 20 June 2021 Home to 150,000 giant sea turtles, the Aldabra Atoll is the worldвЂ™s second-largest coral atoll, made up of 55,000 acres of outer islands. New York Times, 11 June 2022 Stay at the Turneffe Flats and take advantage of the extensive knowledge of their local guide staff, whoвЂ™ve been fishing the atoll for decades. air base, and some field cemeteries were paved over. DarwinвЂ™s theory about the formation of atolls was published in 1842, six years after his legendary voyage aboard the British survey ship HMS Beagle. Corals grow in a ring around a high volcanic island, and as the volcano erodes and subsides back into the ocean the corals continue to grow, staying near the surface. 2022 As the war churned on, the small atoll became a major U.S. Atolls are ring shaped growths of coral surrounding a central lagoon, and are formed in tropical and sub-tropical seas.

Hart Rapaport, Scientific American, 4 Apr. Recent Examples on the Web The archipelago encompasses the largest coral atoll structure on the planet-the Great Chagos Bank.Д¬ullen Murphy, The Atlantic, 15 June 2022 This atoll, home to hundreds of people, was where scientists first tested the hydrogen bomb in 1952.

Atoll formation