World Island Info » Atlantic http://worldislandinfo.com/blog A blog about islands Fri, 14 May 2010 02:47:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 The South Sandwich Islands http://worldislandinfo.com/blog/index.php/2006/12/02/the-south-sandwich-islands/ http://worldislandinfo.com/blog/index.php/2006/12/02/the-south-sandwich-islands/#comments Sat, 02 Dec 2006 22:03:34 +0000 World Island Info http://worldislandinfo.com/blog/index.php/2006/12/02/the-south-sandwich-islands/ The month’s National Geographic has rare coverage of the South Sandwich Islands.

The South Sandwich(es?) are a part of the British dependency of South Georgia in the far South Atlantic.  They are scoured by fierce weather, volcanically active, and uninhabited by humans.

A few highlights from the article:

  • The islands are very young, only about three million years old.
  • They are very difficult to visit, and even scientists seldom set foot there.
  • Birdlife is prolific, including three million chinstrap penguins.  Zavodovski Island alone hosts 2 million each summer, as a photo spread attests
  • Eruptions on Montagu Island since 2005 have added about 100 acres to the island.

NG has some video and commentary on the islands by Maria Stenzel, who took the article’s extraordinary photographs, and got to stand on some of Montagu’s new land.

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