Island nations and territories tend to defy a tidy geographical hierarchy. On a planet covered 70% by interconnected oceans, in a literal sense every place is an island. But the really big ones we think of as continents, leaving the smaller islands – scattered far and wide – as the "leftovers" of geography, which often makes them some of the most unique and interesting destinations.
These region articles attempt to group them logically for the traveler (sometimes bending official geography to do so):
- Islands of the Arctic Ocean - near-polar territories north of 60°
- Islands of the Atlantic Ocean - islands in the east and south Atlantic
- Caribbean - the West Indies and more, a part of the Americas
- Islands of the Indian Ocean - island territories and nations, big and small
- Islands of the Pacific Ocean - Oceania
- Islands of the Southern Ocean - near-polar territories south of 45°