In 2018, a study of aerial photos of 700 Pacific Islands showed that 89% were the same size or growing. This rather destroyed the idea that sea levels were swallowing small nations. The New York Times said nothing. Indeed, the only Pacific things shrinking were deserted sand drifts. No islands bigger than 10 hectares were getting smaller. Measured in square kilometers that's "0.1". Despite the media headlines and delegations from Kiribati and Tuvulu begging for money to hold back the tide, no islands with people living on them were shrinking. None, not one island in the Pacific big enough to matter, was disappearing. The largest 630 islands in the Pacific were had not being touched by climate change for decades.

In 2023 another study of 1,100 islands came to the same conclusion. To find that many islands they included things as small as one thousandth of a square kilometer — we're talking about spits of sand 10 meters square. (There are whales larger than that.)  The Kench team studied islands in the Indian Ocean too. In one case, they sliced, diced and drilled through one poor island in the Maldives and discovered it had a history like tossed salad. The ocean had churned and turned every part of it.