The island was historically inhabited by an indigenous coastal population of Mapuches known as the Lafkenches. The first European to document Mocha was Juan Bautista Pastene on September 10, 1544, who named it Isla de San Nicolas de Tolentino.
The waters off the island were inhabited by sperm whale, including Mocha Dick, who was depicted by American explorer and author Jeremiah N. Reynolds in his published account, "Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal" in May, 1839 in The Knickerbocker magazine in New York.[2] Mocha Dick was one of the inspirations for the fictional whale Moby Dick in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.[3]
Polynesian contact
In December 2007 several human skulls with Polynesian features, such as a pentagonal shape when viewed from behind, were found lying on a shelf in a museum in Concepción. These skulls originated from Mocha Island.[4]
Geography
The island is approximately 48 km2 (19 sq mi) in area, with a chain of mountains running north–south.
Geology
Geologically, the island is made of sedimentary rockstratum of Ranquil Formation, a formation whose main outcrops lie in the continent.[5] The island was permanently uplifted as result of the 2010 Chile earthquake but this uplift was less than in the adjacent coast where Tirúa had the largest uplift of all the coast.[6] The existence of a splay fault called Tirúa-Mocha Fault may explain the different behaviour of Mocha Island relative to the mainland during this earthquake.[6]
^García A., Floreal (1968). Ceccioni, Giovanni (ed.). El Terciario de Chile Zona Central (in Spanish). Santiago de Chile: Ediorial Andrés Bello. pp. 25–57.
^"Isla Mocha". BirdLife Data Zone. BirdLife International. 2024. Retrieved October 2, 2024.
^Hajek, Ernst; Castri, Francesco (1975). "Bioclimatografia de Chile"(PDF) (in Spanish). Archived from the original(PDF) on November 22, 2009. Retrieved May 27, 2024.