Malden Island is discovered by captain George Byron, 7th Baron Byron.
Admiral George Anson Byron, 7th Baron Byron (8 March 1789 1 March 1868) was a British nobleman, naval officer, peer, politician, and the seventh Baron Byron, in 1824 succeeding his cousin the poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron in that peerage. As a career naval officer, he was notable for being his predecessor's opposite in temperament and lifestyle.
Malden Island, sometimes called Independence Island in the 19th century, is a low, arid, uninhabited atoll in the central Pacific Ocean, about 39 km2 (15 sq mi) in area. It is one of the Line Islands belonging to the Republic of Kiribati. The lagoon is entirely enclosed by land, though it is connected to the sea by underground channels, and is quite salty.
The island is chiefly notable for its mysterious prehistoric ruins, its once-extensive deposits of phosphatic guano (exploited by Australian interests from c. 1860–1927), its former use as the site of the first British H-bomb tests (Operation Grapple, 1957), and its current importance as a protected area for breeding seabirds.
The island is designated as the Malden Island Wildlife Sanctuary. In 2014 the Kiribati government established a 12-nautical-mile (14 mi; 22 km) fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands (Caroline (commonly called Millennium), Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck).