 During the 1872–1876 "Challenger" expedition to Indonesia, naturalist John Murray carried out extensive surveys.In 1886, Captain John Maclear of , having discovered an anchorage in a bay that he named "Flying Fish Cove", landed a party and made a small collection of the flora and fauna.In the next year, Pelham Aldrich, on board HMS "Egeria", visited the island for ten days, accompanied by J. J. Lister, who gathered a larger biological and mineralogical collection.