Marion Island

The Prince Edward Islands are two small uninhabited subantarctic volcanic islands in the southern Indian Ocean that are administered by South Africa. They are named Marion Island (named after Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, 1724–1772) and Prince Edward Island (named after Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, 1767–1820).

The islands in the group have been declared Special Nature Reserves under the South African Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act, No. 57 of 2003, and activities on the islands are therefore restricted to research and conservation management. Further protection was granted when the area was declared a marine protected area in 2013. The only human inhabitants of the islands are the staff of a meteorological and biological research station run by the South African National Antarctic Programme on Marion Island.

History

Barent Barentszoon Lam of the Dutch East India Company reached the islands on 4 March 1663 on the ship ''Maerseveen''. They were named ''Dina'' (Prince Edward) and ''Maerseveen'' (Marion), but the islands were erroneously recorded to be at 41° South, and neither were found again by subsequent Dutch sailors.

In January 1772, the French frigate ''Le Mascarin'', captained by Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, visited the islands and spent five days trying to land, thinking they had found Antarctica (then not yet proven to exist). Marion named the islands ''Terre de l'Espérance'' (Marion) and ''Ile de la Caverne'' (Prince Edward). After failing to land, ''Le Mascarin'' continued eastward, discovering the Crozet Islands and landing at New Zealand, where Marion du Fresne and some of his crew were killed by local Māoris.

Julien Crozet, navigator and second in command of ''Le Mascarin'', survived the disaster, and happened to meet James Cook at Cape Town in 1776, at the onset of Cook's third voyage. Crozet shared the charts of his ill-fated expedition, and as Cook sailed from Cape Town, he passed the islands on 13 December, but was unable to attempt a landing due to bad weather. Cook named the islands after Prince Edward, the fourth son of King George III; and though he is also often credited with naming the larger island Marion, after Captain Marion, this name was adopted by sealers and whalers who later hunted the area, to distinguish the two islands.

The first recorded landing on the islands was in 1799 by a group of French seal hunters of the ''Sally''. Another landing in late 1803 by a group of seal hunters led by American captain Henry Fanning of the ''Catharine'' found signs of earlier human occupation. The islands were frequented by sealers until about 1810, when the local fur seal populations had been nearly eradicated. The first scientific expedition to the islands was led by James Clark Ross, who visited in 1840 during his exploration of the Antarctic, but was unable to land. Ross sailed along the islands on 21 April 1840. He made observations on vast numbers of penguins ("groups of many thousands each"), and other kinds of sea-birds. He also saw fur seals, which he supposed to be of the species ''Arctocephalus falklandicus''. The islands were finally surveyed during the ''Challenger'' Expedition, led by Captain George Nares, in 1873.

The sealing era lasted from 1799 to 1913. During that period visits by 103 vessels are recorded, seven of which ended in shipwreck. Sealing relics include iron trypots, the ruins of huts and inscriptions. The occasional modern sealing vessel visited from Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1920s.

The islands have been the location of other shipwrecks. In June 1849 the brig ''Richard Dart'', with a troop of Royal Engineers under Lt. James Liddell, was wrecked on Prince Edward Island; only 10 of the 63 on board survived to be rescued by elephant seal hunters from Cape Town. In 1908 the Norwegian vessel ''Solglimt'' was shipwrecked on Marion Island, and survivors established a short-lived village at the north coast, before being rescued. The wreck of the ''Solglimt'' is the best-known in the islands, and is accessible to divers.

The British government never officially claimed ownership of the islands, however it did manage economic activities on the islands in the early 20th century. In 1908, the British government granted a guano lease on Marion Island. Following the Second World War, technological advancements made the islands more strategically important, and as no further economic activity was taking place, the UK was concerned other countries might claim the islands. In late 1947 and early 1948, South Africa, with Britain's agreement, annexed the islands and installed the meteorological station on Transvaal Cove on the north-east coast of Marion Island.

On 22 September 1979, a US surveillance satellite known as Vela 6911 noted an unidentified double flash of light, known as the Vela incident, in the waters off the islands. There was and continues to be considerable controversy over whether this event was perhaps an undeclared nuclear test carried out by South Africa and Israel or some other event. The cause of the flash remains officially unknown, and some information about the event remains classified. Today, most independent researchers believe that the 1979 flash was caused by a nuclear explosion.

In 2003, the South African government declared the Prince Edward Islands a Special Nature Reserve, and in 2013 declared of ocean waters around the islands a Marine Protection Area, thus creating one of the world's largest environmental protection areas.

Marion Research Station

On 4 January 1948 Marion Island and neighbouring Prince Edward Island were officially annexed into South Africa. A group of 14 sailors stayed on the island until 16 days later a permanent occupying force was left there, soon building a meteorological station. The 1948 research station on Marion Island was soon enlarged and today studies regional meteorology and the biology of the islands, in particular the birds (penguins, petrels, albatrosses, gulls) and seals.

A new research base was built from 2001 to 2011 to replace older buildings on the site. The access to the station is either by boat or helicopter. A helipad and storage hangar is located behind the main base structure.

In April 2017, scientists from McGill University, in collaboration with the South African National Antarctic Programme, launched a new astrophysical experiment on Marion Island called Probing Radio Intensity at high-Z from Marion ( PRIZM), searching for signatures of the hydrogen line in the early universe. In 2018, another cosmology experiment was launched by the McGill team called Array of Long Baseline Antennas for Taking Radio Observation from Sub-Antarctic (ALBATROS). The new experiment aims to create very high-resolution maps of the low-frequency radio emission from the universe, and take first steps towards detecting the cosmological Dark Ages.

In April 2024, the South African National Antarctic Programme station on Marion Island was depicted in an ad for KFC South Africa directed by Kim Geldenhuys, Beyond the Sea, which depicted two hungry South Africans determined to get home for some fried chicken.

Geography and geology

The island group is about south-east of Port Elizabeth in mainland South Africa. At 46 degrees latitude, its distance to the equator is only slightly longer than to the South Pole. Marion Island (), the larger of the two, is long and wide with an area of and a coastline of some , most of which is high cliffs. The highest point on Marion Island is Mascarin Peak (formerly State President Swart Peak), reaching above sea level. The topography of Marion Island includes many hillocks and small lakes, and boggy lowland terrain with little vegetation.

Prince Edward Island () is much smaller—only , long and wide—and lies some to the north-east of Marion Island. The terrain is generally rocky, with high cliffs () on its south western side. At the van Zinderen Bakker Peak north-west of the center, it reaches a height of .

There are a few offshore rocks along the northern coast of Prince Edward Island, like Ship Rock north of northernmost point, and Ross Rocks from the shore. Boot Rock is about off the northern coast of Marion Island.

Both islands are of volcanic origin. Marion Island is one of the peaks of a large underwater shield volcano that rises some from the sea floor to the top of Mascarin Peak. The volcano is active, with eruptions having occurred between 1980 and 2004. While Prince Edward Island may have erupted within the last 10 thousand years.

File:Prince Edward Island, South Africa, EO-1 ALI satellite image, 5 May 2009.jpg, Satellite image of Prince Edward Island, 2009.
File:Marion Island, South Africa, EO-1 ALI satellite image, 5 May 2009.jpg, Satellite image of Marion Island, 2009

Climate

Despite being located inside the south temperate zone at 46 degrees latitude, the islands have a tundra climate. They lie directly in the path of eastward-moving depressions all year round and this gives them an unusually cool and windy climate. Strong regional winds, known as the roaring forties, blow almost every day of the year, and the prevailing wind direction is north-westerly. Annual rainfall averages from up to over on Mascarin Peak. In spite of its very chilly climate it is located closer to the equator than mild northern hemisphere climates such as Paris and Seattle and only one degree farther south than fellow southern hemisphere climates such as Comodoro Rivadavia in Argentina and Alexandra in New Zealand. Many climates on lower latitudes in the Northern hemisphere have far colder winters than Prince Edward Islands due to the islands' maritime moderation, even though temperatures in summer are much cooler than those normally found in maritime climates.

The islands are among the cloudiest places in the world; about 1300 hours a year of sunshine occur on the sheltered eastern side of Marion Island, but only around 800 hours occur away from the coast on the wet western sides of Marion and Prince Edward Islands.

Summer and winter have fairly similar climates with cold winds and threat of snow or frost at any time of the year. However, the mean temperature in February (midsummer) is and in August (midwinter) it is .

Flora and fauna

The islands are part of the Southern Indian Ocean Islands tundra ecoregion that includes a small number of subantarctic islands. Because of the paucity of land masses in the Southern Ocean, the islands host a wide variety of species and are critical to conservation. In the cold subantarctic climate, plants are mainly limited to grasses, mosses, and kelp, while lichens are the most visible fungi. The main indigenous animals are insects (such as the seaweed-eating weevil ''Palirhoeus eatoni'') along with large populations of seabirds, seals and penguins.

Birds

The islands have been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International for their significant seabird breeding populations. At least thirty different species of birds are thought to breed on the islands, and it is estimated the islands support upwards of 5 million breeding seabirds, and 8 million seabirds total. Five species of albatross (of which all are either threatened or endangered) are known to breed on the islands, including the wandering albatross, dark-mantled, light-mantled, Indian yellow-nosed and grey-headed albatross.

The islands also host fourteen species of petrel, four species of prion, the Antarctic tern, and the brown skua, among other seabirds. Four penguin species are found: king penguins, Eastern rockhoppers, gentoos and macaroni penguins.

Mammals

Three species of seal breed on the islands: the southern elephant seal, the Antarctic fur seal, and the Subantarctic fur seal. The waters surrounding the islands are often frequented by several species of whale, especially orcas, which prey on penguins and seals. Large whales such as southern rights and southern humpbacks, and leopard seals are seen more sporadically, and it remains unclear how large or stable their current local populations are, though it is thought their numbers are significantly down compared to the time of first human contact with the islands.

The area saw heavy sealing and whaling operations in the nineteenth century and continued to be subject to mass illegal whaling until the 1970s, with the Soviet Union and Japan allegedly continuing whaling operations into the 1990s. Currently, the greatest ecological threat is the longline fishing

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