Seymour Island
Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing
The island of Seymour ( Seymour Iceland english, spanish isla isla Seymour or Marambio ) is located in the Weddell Sea, south-east of the northern tip of Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula. The island is located a few kilometers northeast of Snow Hill Iceland and east of James Ross Island. It is 2.5 to 8.8 km wide and 19.2 km long, and has an area of approximately 100 km ². In 1843 she was discovered by the British navigator Sir James Clark Ross. He named the island after Rear Admiral and later Fleet Admiral Sir George Francis Seymour ( 1787-1870 ).
The island is sometimes after the resident Argentine base in Argentina also called isla Marambio. The scientists there dealing inter alia with the Northern Lights (aurora australis), with meteorology, properties of the ionosphere, glaciology, cosmic rays and the monitoring of the ozone content of the stratosphere.
In Penguins Bay on the south coast of the island is a wooden plaque, erected by the crew of Argentine Corvette Uruguay in the place where they met on November 10, 1903 two participants of the missing Swedish Antarctic Expedition led by Otto Nordenskjold. The panel and a cairn erected in 1990 standing as Historical sites and monuments HSM -60 under the protection of the Antarctic Treaty.
Climate
The climate on the island of Seymour is cold and dry. At the Marambio station, the mean temperature is above the year at -9.1 ° C in December, the warmest month, at -1.7 ° C and in July, the coldest month, at -15.2 ° C. The strong winds and low rainfall make sure that the surface of the island is mostly free of snow.
Fauna (animal life )
The Seymour Island is recognized by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area ( Ant031 ). In addition to large colonies of Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae ) breeding on the island of Seymour also Antipodenseeschwalbe ( fork Swan, Tern Antarctic Tern respectively ) ( Sterna vittata ), the Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus ), the Antarctic skua (C. maccormicki ), the Subantarktikskua ( Stercorarius antarcticus ) and Wilson's Storm Petrel ( Oceanites oceanicus ).
The Norwegian Captain Carl Anton Larsen found in 1892 on the island of fossils. The island has since, as the adjacent James Ross Island, a preferred place for paleontological field research, especially because in the deposits manifests the KT boundary, which was connected to a mass extinction of species. On the island of countless fossils have been discovered, including extinct plants, invertebrates, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, fish, crocodiles, whales and penguins.