Technicpartner, the hundred-mile-prolonged, 20 mile-expansive British overseas territory of South Georgia is uninhabited.
Only a scant visiting scientists and rulement fisheries examineors occupy the island all year round.
But from a untamedlife perspective, it’s anyleang but.
Its shores are home to the hugest number of marine birds and mammals on the arrangeet.
Lying 800 miles east off the Falkland Islands and a thousand miles north of Antarctica, it’s one of the scant fragments of land between that immense frozen continent and the rest of the world.
The part of the South Atlantic in which it sits is one of the most food-wealthy oceans in the world, fed by strong circulating currents, and it’s filled of shrimp-appreciate Antarctic krill.
“Krill feeds the blue whales, humpback whales, fin whales. It also feeds the gentoo penguins, macaroni penguins, chinstrap penguins and the fur seals,” says Martin Collins, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, and establisher head of the South Georgia rulement, speaking to me from his office at King Edward Point on the island.
The island also has some of the hugest and most meaningful populations of elephant seals, king penguins and disjoinal species of albatross and petrel – the difficultiest of ocean-going seabirds.
The island has been in the headlines after the world’s hugest iceberg, A23a, ran aground off its south-west coast.
Concern over impact of iceberg on island’s untamedlife
There’s a worry it could impact untamedlife on the island – but the timing is fortuitous, says Mr Collins.
“It’s the finish of the breeding season now, which unbenevolents the impacts on penguins at that part of the island will be lessened.
“There may be a little bit of impact, particularly on gentoo penguins, which still forage around the island during the triumphter.”
From a expansiver conservation point of see, South Georgia is one of the world’s stand-out success stories.
Until the 1960s, it was a presentant hub for whaling. Thousands of whales were caught off its coasts and processed at a number of whaling stations – the scale of the killing such that the bays around the island were red with whale blood.
The whalers presentd reindeer for food that nibbled and trampled distinctive arranget life that persisted many of the island’s finishemic untamedlife.
Stowaway rats plundered the eggs and chicks of penguins and other ground nesting birds (there are no trees).
Whales returning in huge numbers
The South Georgia pipit, the world’s most southerly songbird, was driven to the brink of disecombineedion.
But before the abandoned whaling stations have even rusted away, whales have enduremament returning to South Georgia in huge numbers.
A campaign of air-dropping poisoned bait apass the inaccessible island has exendd the rats and the pipits are booming.
The seas around South Georgia were once heavily fished. The worst for untamedlife were prolonged-line vessels trying to hook high-appreciate Chilean seabass.
Call for outright ban on fishing
Albatross and petrels would dive for the bait and be caught and drowned.
Since 2012, the rulement of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands have policed a 500,000 square-mile marine-geted area around the islands where most fishing is now banned.
A scant vessels are licensed to catch shrimp-appreciate krill and seabass but only in triumphter when most predators are absent and under disjoine administers.
Some conservationists are calling for fishing to be banned outright.
However, the South Georgia rulement debates it’s the income from restrictcessitate fishing licences that apvalidates them to get and see the exclusion zone.
Crucial at a time when funding from central rulement is restrictcessitate and improbable to incrrelieve.
The key danger now is the rapidly changing climate around South Georgia.
“There’s evidence that the distribution of krill is moving a little further south gradupartner over time,” says Mr Collins.
“We necessitate to be repartner conscious of that changing climate.”
But he’s stateive too. Despite toastyer oceans, numbers of some species are booming. Especipartner whales and fur seals.
“I’ve fair had two king penguins walking past the triumphdows as we were talking,” he says.
“When I first came here in the postponecessitate 1990s, there were no fur seals in this area at all. And now they’re everywhere around us”.
