Kanton Island, Coral atoll in the Phoenix Islands, Kiribati.

Kanton Island is the largest and northernmost atoll of the Phoenix Islands, a 14.4 km long ring of land 46 to 548 m wide around a lagoon. The beach of coral rubble and sand rises to a flat interior; only the southern strip supports Scaevola, palms and heliotropes. Pan American Airways cut a wide channel through the southern lagoon for its landing aircraft.

Two British whaling ships, the Phoenix and the Mary, sighted the atoll on 5 August 1824 and named it Mary Ballcotts Island. It took its present name from the whaler Canton, wrecked on the reef on 4 March 1854; in 1872 Commander R. W. Mead named the atoll after that ship. Britain and the US disputed the island until a 50-year condominium agreement; a US airfield built during World War II made it a staging stop for aircraft bound for Australia and New Zealand.

The atoll's Kiribati name is Abariringa, and its single settlement is called Tebaronga (also Canton). Kiribati resettled people here from the Gilbert Islands after independence, and the reopened post office serves this small community, which numbered 31 in the 2010 census.

Kanton has no regular supply ship or airstrip in use; the 2010 census counted 31 residents, and in 2010 a supply vessel failed to arrive, leaving 24 islanders short of food until yacht skipper Alex Bond raised the alarm by satellite phone. Arrange transport and provisions well in advance.

In 2010, British sailor Alex Bond stopped here while delivering a yacht from Hawaii to Fiji and found 24 islanders short of food because their supply ship had broken down. He called the British Coast Guard by satellite phone, which alerted the US Coast Guard to send help.