Omega Island

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Called The Omega island (formerly Melchior Iceland ), also Isla Sobral, is a 10 km ², mostly covered with ice, uninhabited island of the Melchior Islands on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Southern Ocean.

History

Of area, the largest island of the Melchior Islands was probably discovered by the German whalers Eduard Dallmann, the discovery of the entire island group is attributed to the Antarctic summer 1873/74.

The present name of the island - to about 1946, they Melchior Iceland called - is due to the alternative designation of the island at an Argentine Antarctic Expedition in the years 1942 and 1943. The renaming was necessary, as the entire island group received the official name Melchior Islands.

Others

The Omega island was and is often triggered in the context of Antarctic cruises. Since the area is dotted around the island with broken ice, it can only be approached with inflatable boats. The main attraction is, in addition to the observation of many Weddell seals, a small fjord, which ends right at a remarkable drip line of a glacier.

In the course of such a rafting trip discovered the crew and passengers of Bremen in February 2003, a new island, which later officially named after the ship Bremen island, which is separated (Bremen channel ) from the east adjacent Omega island only by a narrow channel. Until that time, it was assumed that the area of Bremen island is only part of the Omega island.