Qualla: Mavulis Island

Mavulis Island: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Draw a line from the southern tip of Taiwan straight south through the Luzon Strait, and you will intersect Mavulis Island before you reach the Philippine mainland. That geographic fact alone makes this small, uninhabited island one of the most strategically watched pieces of land in Southeast Asia. The northernmost point of the Philippines sits closer to Cape Eluanbi, Taiwan's southern cape, than it does to the northernmost point of Luzon — 142 kilometers to Taiwan's tip, roughly 200 kilometers to Luzon's. In the older Ivatan language of the Batanes people, the island's name says simply what it is: north.

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Mavulis Island: An Island of Many Names

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Army Map Service, Corps of Engineers, Public domain. The Ivatan people of Batanes, whose seafaring culture has navigated these waters for centuries, called the island Dimavulis or Dihami — both meaning "north" in their language. Spanish colonial administrators used Diami. American colonial-era maps rendered it as Yami or Y'Ami, a n...

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Image: Army Map Service, Corps of Engineers | Public domain

Mavulis Island: Rocky Coasts and Coconut Crabs

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The island itself is small and rugged. It measures roughly a kilometer at its widest. The highest point, Y'Ami Hill, rises to 219 meters above the Luzon Strait. The coastline is rocky, offering few safe landings, but the interior slopes are covered in lush vegetation — mangroves ...

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Mavulis Island: A Sentinel in the Strait

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Mavulis sits at the intersection of some of the most contested maritime space in the world. The Luzon Strait is the deep-water channel connecting the South China Sea with the Pacific Ocean, the route through which submarine and surface fleets must pass if they are moving between ...

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Mavulis Island: Watching the Strait

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. By 2024 the island had become a recurring location for Balikatan — the annual joint military exercises between the United States and the Philippines — and port upgrades were being planned across the Batanes chain to accommodate more cargo and to prepare contingency routes for Fil...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain