Nutiran

The northwestern bulbous end of the island was called Nutiran (pronounced "Nusiran") by the colonists, presumably because it was where the New Zealand surveyors were camped when the first working party arrived in 1938. One early resident, however, said that it was so named because the Norwich City was understood to have come from New Zealand.

Nutiran in the late 1940s. Caption on back of the photo reads: Clearing operations on Nutirans forest.

The lagoon clearly once penetrated deeply into Nutiran; this area is now filled in to become a mudflat. The mudflat is characterized by a marshy mix of mud, sand, and bird guano, on which a crust forms under dry conditions. It is riddled with land crab burrows, and extremely difficult to walk on, especially when wet. Near the lagoon it merges with a straightforward sandbar that is variably exposed and submerged, partially blocking the inner end of Tatiman Passage.

North of the mudflat/sandbar, the island reaches its highest point (about 15 meters) in a ridge that begins near the northwest cape and runs down the east side of the island. The northern part of this ridge is made up of solid shelving coral as well as coral rubble; farther to the south it appears to be mostly rubble. On Nutiran the ridge is fairly heavily wooded in buka (pisonia grandis); the immediate fringe of the mudflat is covered with coconut forest. A coral shelf forms the east edge of the mudflat, behind which is thick scaevola, fronting a thin forest of buka. On the west -- where land was cleared and planted in the late 1940s and 50s -- there is much more coconut forest, extending out to merge with scaevola in the relative lowlands along the shore.

TIGHAR conducted cursory archaeological surveys on Nutiran in 1989, focusing on the mudflat/sandbar area, the buka forest north, east, and west of the mudflat, and the scaevola-laden lowlands along the west (lee) shore. A much more intensive survey was conducted in the lowlands in 1999, and the reef flat fronting Nutiran on the island's lee side has been intensively inspected on several occasions, notably in 2001 and 2007. The reef face has been subjected to inspection and metal detection by divers down to about 45 meters.