Islands

[sponsmith]

Obviously the definition of an island is up for debate,coupled with the fact that new ones are formed and old ones disappear on a regualar basis. Even still, is there a relaible count of how many islands there are on Earth?

[qapmoc]

The closest I can find is this - The Earth is home to over 100,000 islands. The 150 largest alone have a landmass equal to the size of Europe. One in every ten people on Earth is an islander. More than 600 million people live on islands.

I suppose that nobody has ever sat down and counted them all, as many would not show up on anything except the most detailed local maps. I mean how would you count them all, where I am there is a small bay with about 5 small islands ranging from a 100 metres to 500 metres long and they are not shown on any normal shipping maps and all over the world there are places like it.