Namibia's 14 islands all lie close to the coast between Walvis Bay and the Orange River mouth. Most of them are little more than wind- and wave-swept isolated rocks that jut out of the Atlantic Ocean. The largest, Possession Island, covers 140 hectares, but most are less than 10 hectares in size. The islands first attracted interest in the early nineteenth century. Merchants, recognising the value of their vast guano reserves, soon stripped the islands of guano and shipped it to Europe where it was used for manufacturing fertiliser and gunpowder.
Although the heyday of guano mining was between the 1840s to 1860s, it continued well into the twentieth century. On Halifax Island, the removal of the guano in the 1930s was devastating to African penguins that had nested in burrows in the thick guano. In recent years there has been a small recovery with several thousand birds living on the island, however, they were again severely impacted in 2018/19 by an outbreak of bird flu.
The birds and marine life surrounding these islands now enjoy greater protection following the proclamation in 2008 of the Namibian Islands' Marine Protected Area. Formal regulations pertaining to each island were gazetted in December 2012.
