Ikema

Ikema curves like a horseshoe around the 38 ha Ikema Wetland. The wetland was once an inlet, and it turned to fresh water after reclamation dykes in the 1920s and 1930s and the fishing-port works of 1963–1982 sealed it off. The whole island became a national wildlife protection area in 2011. Bonito fishing began here in 1906, and katsuobushi, dried bonito, is still the island's product.

Ikema people spread across the region in the 18th and 19th centuries, to Sarahama on Irabu and to Nishihara and Nagama on Miyako, and their descendants count as Ikema people too. The Myaakuzutsu festival runs for three days in the ninth lunar month at four sacred sites. Offshore to the north, the great Yabiji reef surfaces at the spring tides.