Proclamation Island

Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / area missing

Proclamation Iceland is a small, rocky island off the coast of Enderbylands in East Antarctica. It is located about 2.5 nautical miles east of Cape Batterbee, east of the island are the Aagaard Islands.

History

The island was discovered by the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition under Sir Douglas Mawson from aboard the Discovery of. The expedition was on the search for a possible landing site on the coast of the continent. However, since there was no such place due to the high Eiswalls on the coast, was missed on this island. With a boat ten men of the expedition were rowing on January 13, 1930 Island and Mawson became the first ground of the island. On the 245 m high summit of the island, they built a cairn for a flagpole, where they hoisted the Union Jack around this region of the Antarctic continent for the British Crown to take possession. Mawson recited on this occasion an official proclamation taking possession from memory ( because the document had been mistakenly been buried hastily in a metal canister on the flagpole ). The island was named Proclamation Iceland ( " Proclamation Island" ) pursuant to this announcement.

Following a proposal of Australia were the cairn and a plaque that had been installed by the expedition members there, added in 1972 to the list of historic sites and monuments in Antarctica.

Fauna

Live on the island and breed penguins and various other birds. Reports of the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition and the part therein ornithologists RA Falla According existed in the 1930s, large breeding colonies of Adelie penguins on the island. The researcher J. cooper, who visited the island in 1985, found only one colony, which he estimated about 5,000 Adelie penguins on a size. Furthermore, reported the expedition of snow petrels ( Pagodroma nivea ), White-winged petrels ( Thalassoica antarctica), Kapsturmvögeln ( Daption capense ), silver petrels ( Fulmarus glacialoides ), Wilson petrels ( Oceanites oceanicus ) and Antarktikskuas ( Stercorarius maccormicki ).

1978 discovered the researcher DS Horning copies of the beetle species Bountya insularis on the island.