These occasionally dry up, and are said to be dangerous to approach: one worker during the island's guano-mining days sank up to his neck in salty mud before being rescued.

[4] The island boasts a large colony of sooty terns, estimated at 1.5 million pairs, together with Polynesian rats, feral cats, green turtles, and around fifteen other species of seabirds.

[6] The island was sighted again on December 12, 1823 by Obed's first cousin, Valentine Starbuck, the American-born master of the British whaling ship L'Aigle.

Byron, commanding the British warship HMS Blonde, was returning to London from a special mission to Honolulu to repatriate the remains of the Hawaiian royal couple, King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu, who had died of measles while trying to visit King George IV.

Due to its low profile and dangerous surrounding reefs, a number of ships were wrecked at Starbuck Island in the late 19th century.

The experience allowed the captain of Euryale, future contre-admiral Albert Des Portes, to finally chart the correct geographical location of the island.

[11] In 2014 the Kiribati government established a 12-nautical-mile fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands: Caroline (commonly called Millennium), Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck.