Northern Cook Islands

Lying in a horizontal band between 9° and 13°30' south of the Equator, the chain consists of the atolls of Manihiki, Nassau, Penrhyn, Pukapuka, Rakahanga and Suwarrow, along with the submerged Tema Reef.

The chain forms a roughly inverted triangular shape, stretching from Penrhyn in the northeast to Pukapuka in the northwest and to Suwarrow in the south.

The islands were settled by Polynesians for several centuries before the first European visitors, Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña, navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, and their crew reached and named the island of San Bernardo in 1595, now widely believed to have been Pukapuka.

[4] The population of the chain was decimated by blackbirding during the 19th century, with the island of Tongareva (now more widely known as Penrhyn) being almost completely depopulated.

Despite this, the United States military acknowledged New Zealand sovereignty during World War II operations.