Torishima Island Japan Izu Islands, Hachijo
2
Cruises availables
At departure or passage at this port
Silversea Cruises (2 Cruises)
Frequently Asked Questions
No. There is no quay waiting for the ship and the island is uninhabited. Expedition itineraries approach for scenic cruising only, with no landing: the island belongs to its birds, and that is precisely what makes it valuable.
In the middle of the Pacific, some 300 kilometres south of Hachijojima in the Izu archipelago. It is administratively part of Tokyo, though it lies about 570 kilometres away.
For the albatrosses. Torishima is the main nesting site of the short-tailed albatross, an ocean giant once believed extinct in the mid-twentieth century after being decimated by hunting for its feathers.
Through decades of patient work by Japanese researchers. The island has been a bird sanctuary since 1954. Each pair raises only one chick per season, so the species' recovery played out year after year, nest after nest.
Binoculars in hand, you follow these long-haul gliders skimming the waves without a wingbeat, then rising into the wind as if pulled by an invisible thread. Onboard naturalists also identify petrels, shearwaters and other large gliders, and sometimes point out the blow of a migrating humpback whale.
Yes. What you see, a dome about two and a half kilometres across rising to 394 metres, is only the summit of an underwater volcanic edifice roughly 3,000 metres tall. An eruption reshaped its slopes again in 2002.
Kept at a respectful distance from the shore, it reveals ochre and grey cliffs, inaccessible coves and plumes of spray bursting against the rocks. The contrast between that mineral violence and the grace of the great birds never gets old.
There is no excursion to arrange and no schedule to keep. The approach turns the ship into an observation post: you settle wherever you like, at the bow facing the wind or sheltered behind glass, while photographers set up telephoto lenses along the rail.
The swell decides. Some days the ship lingers a long while off the colony; others, it salutes the island from farther out. That letting go is one of the real luxuries of a sea voyage, but it has to be accepted in advance.
Binoculars above all, and a telephoto lens if you photograph. A windbreaker helps: the morning is spent at sea, often at the bow. Naturalists commentate from the bridge throughout the approach.
