Prion Island
__NOTOC__ Prion Island is an island north-northeast of Luck Point, lying in the Bay of Isles, South Georgia. It was charted in 1912-13 by Robert Cushman Murphy, American naturalist aboard the brig ''Daisy'', and so named because he observed prions on the island. The island has been designated as a Specially Protected Area by the South Georgia Government, due to its rat-free status and breeding wandering albatross The wandering albatross, snowy albatross, white-winged albatross or goonie (''Diomedea exulans'') is a large seabird from the family Diomedeidae, which has a circumpolar range in the Southern Ocean. It was the last species of albatross to be de ...es. Access is by permit, in that the island must be specifically named on the visit application and permit. A boardwalk with two viewing platforms was built in February/March 2008 to prevent erosion of the access gully and trampling of prion burrows. Wandering Albatross population counts are conducted annually. Because it ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Island
An island or isle is a piece of subcontinental land completely surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. Sedimentary islands in the Ganges Delta are called chars. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands, such as the Philippines, is referred to as an archipelago. There are two main types of islands in the sea: continental islands and oceanic islands. There are also artificial islands (man-made islands). There are about 900,000 official islands in the world. This number consists of all the officially-reported islands of each country. The total number of islands in the world is unknown. There may be hundreds of thousands of tiny islands that are unknown and uncounted. The number of sea islands in the world is estimated to be more than 200,000. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Luck Point
The Bay of Isles is a bay wide and receding , lying between Cape Buller and Cape Wilson along the north coast of South Georgia. It was discovered in 1775 by a British expedition under James Cook and so named by him because numerous islands (at least twelve) lie in the bay. Of South Georgia's 31 breeding bird species, 17 are found here. Named features The features around the Bay of Isles have been charted and named by a number of Antarctic expeditions since 1775. The bay is wide, and has a complex coastline that includes many subsidiary bays, coves, inlets, and other features, many of which have named headlands and points between them. The west coast of the Bay of Isles is roughly C-shaped. Its northernmost point is the rugged headland Cape Buller; Cleveland Rock sits nearby. Pyramid Peak rises over the cape. Just southeast of the cape sits Barlas Bank, a small submarine bank. At the top of the C-shape, Koppervik cove indents the north coast of the west side of the bay, with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bay Of Isles
The Bay of Isles is a bay wide and receding , lying between Cape Buller and Cape Wilson along the north coast of South Georgia. It was discovered in 1775 by a British expedition under James Cook and so named by him because numerous islands (at least twelve) lie in the bay. Of South Georgia's 31 breeding bird species, 17 are found here. Named features The features around the Bay of Isles have been charted and named by a number of Antarctic expeditions since 1775. The bay is wide, and has a complex coastline that includes many subsidiary bays, coves, inlets, and other features, many of which have named headlands and points between them. The west coast of the Bay of Isles is roughly C-shaped. Its northernmost point is the rugged headland Cape Buller; Cleveland Rock sits nearby. Pyramid Peak rises over the cape. Just southeast of the cape sits Barlas Bank, a small submarine bank. At the top of the C-shape, Koppervik cove indents the north coast of the west side of the bay, wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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South Georgia Island
South Georgia ( es, Isla San Pedro) is an island in the South Atlantic Ocean that is part of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It lies around east of the Falkland Islands. Stretching in the east–west direction, South Georgia is around long and has a maximum width of . The terrain is mountainous, with the central ridge rising to at Mount Paget. The northern coast is indented with numerous bays and fjords, serving as good harbours. Discovered by Europeans in 1675, South Georgia had no indigenous population due to its harsh climate and remoteness. Captain James Cook in made the first landing, survey and mapping of the island, and on 17 January 1775 he claimed it a British possession, naming it "Isle of Georgia" after King George III. Through its history, it served as a whaling and seal hunting base, with intermittent population scattered in several whaling bases, the most important historically being Grytviken. The main s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Cushman Murphy
The whaling ship, ''Daisy'', which Murphy traveled on to the Antarctic Robert Cushman Murphy (April 29, 1887 – March 20, 1973) was an American ornithologist and Lamont Curator of birds at the American Museum of Natural History. He went on numerous oceanic expeditions and was an expert on marine birds, and wrote several major books on them. He described a species of petrel which is now known as Murphy's petrel. Mount Murphy in Antarctica and Murphy Wall in South Georgia are named after him. Life and work Murphy was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Thomas D. Murphy and Augusta Cushman. Around 1906 Murphy assisted Frank Chapman at the American Museum of Natural History and read the proofs of ''Warblers of North America''. He was an undergraduate at Brown University, where he graduated in 1911. He married Grace Alice Bairstow in 1911 who he met as a student at Brown University. Grace persuaded Robert to take a position as naturalist aboard the whaling ship ''Daisy''. After their ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prion (bird)
The prions () or whalebirds are small petrels in the genera ''Pachyptila'' and ''Halobaena''. They form one of the four groups within the Procellariidae along with the gadfly petrels, shearwaters and fulmarine petrels. The name comes from the Greek ', meaning " saw", a reference of the serrated edges of the birds' saw-like bill. They are found in the Southern Ocean and breed on a number of subantarctic islands. Prions grow long, and have blue-grey upper parts and white underparts. Three species of prion have flattened bills with a fringe of lamellae that act as strainers for zooplankton.Maynard, B. J. (2003) All prions are marine and feed on small crustacea such as copepods, ostracods, decapods, and krill, as well as some fish such as myctophids and nototheniids. List of species * ''Pachyptila'' ** ''Pachyptila turtur'', fairy prion ** ''Pachyptila belcheri'', slender-billed prion ** ''Pachyptila crassirostris'', fulmar prion ** ''Pachyptila vittata'', broad-billed pr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wandering Albatross
The wandering albatross, snowy albatross, white-winged albatross or goonie (''Diomedea exulans'') is a large seabird from the family Diomedeidae, which has a circumpolar range in the Southern Ocean. It was the last species of albatross to be described, and was long considered the same species as the Tristan albatross and the Antipodean albatross. A few authors still consider them all subspecies of the same species. The SACC has a proposal on the table to split this species, and BirdLife International has already split it. Together with the Amsterdam albatross, it forms the wandering albatross species complex. The wandering albatross is one of the two largest members of the genus ''Diomedea'' (the great albatrosses), being similar in size to the southern royal albatross. It is one of the largest, best known, and most studied species of bird in the world. It has the greatest known wingspan of any living bird, and is also one of the most far-ranging birds. Some individual wa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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South Georgia Pipit
The South Georgia pipit (''Anthus antarcticus'') is a sparrow-sized bird only found on the South Georgia archipelago off the Antarctic Peninsula. It is the only songbird in Antarctica, South Georgia's only passerine, and one of the few non-seabirds of the region. It builds nests from dried grass, usually within tussac grass, and lays four eggs a year. It feeds on small insects and spiders, and beach debris. It has been threatened by the human introduction of rats, and also by environmental damage caused by humans. It has been chosen as the poster bird of the South Georgia Heritage Trust's Habitat Restoration (Rat Eradication) project, which started eradicating rats on South Georgia in 2011. The project's baiting phase ended in early 2015, and success was confirmed in 2018. Visitors can see the bird on Prion Island, and on beach's on South Georgia since the eradication project took hold. Description The South Georgia pipit is a small and stocky pipit, long and weighing . The sp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Petrel
Petrels are tube-nosed seabirds in the bird order Procellariiformes. Description The common name does not indicate relationship beyond that point, as "petrels" occur in three of the four families within that group (all except the albatross family, Diomedeidae). Having a fossil record that was assumed to extend back at least 60 million years, the Procellariiformes was long considered to be among the older bird groupings, other than the ratites, with presumably distant ties to penguins and loons. However, recent research and fossil finds such as '' Vegavis'' show that the Galliformes (pheasants, grouse and relatives), and Anseriformes (ducks, geese) are still not fully resolved. Known species All the members of the order are exclusively pelagic in distribution—returning to land only to breed. The family Procellariidae is the main radiation of medium-sized true petrels, characterised by united nostrils with medium septum, and a long outer functional primary feather. It ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prion Island Panorama
Prions are misfolded proteins that have the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes a normal protein to misfold, but the resulting abnormal three-dimensional structure confers infectious properties by collapsing nearby protein molecules into the same shape. The word ''prion'' is derived from the term, "proteinaceous infectious particle". In comparison to all other known infectious agents such as viroids, viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids ( DNA, RNA, or both), the hypothesized role of a protein as an infectious agent stands in contrast. Prion isoforms of the prion protein (PrP), whose specific function is uncertain, are hypothesized as the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), including scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Islands Of South Georgia
An island or isle is a piece of subcontinental land completely surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. Sedimentary islands in the Ganges Delta are called chars. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands, such as the Philippines, is referred to as an archipelago. There are two main types of islands in the sea: continental islands and oceanic islands. There are also artificial islands (man-made islands). There are about 900,000 official islands in the world. This number consists of all the officially-reported islands of each country. The total number of islands in the world is unknown. There may be hundreds of thousands of tiny islands that are unknown and uncounted. The number of sea islands in the world is estimated to be more than 200,000. The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |