Zavodovski Island, one of the 11 in the South Sandwich chain, has an active volcano and no signs of bird nesting areas or seal colonies.
Zavodovski Island is the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands, which extend southward in a shallow arc open to the west.
After visiting Zavodovski Island, we came back to an interesting pair of twin islands, Candlemas and Vindication, also in the South Sandwich chain, which are both active volcanoes with a one- or two-mile wide channel between them (where we spent the morning sampling).
Global Volcanism Program | Zavodovski | Summary(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
The 5-km-wide Zavodovski Island, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands, consists of a single 551-m-high basaltic stratovolcano with two parasitic cones on the east side.
Zavodovski is the most frequently visited of the South Sandwich Islands.
It was erupting when first seen in 1819 by the explorer Bellingshausen, and the volcano has been reported to be smoking during subsequent visits.
The South Sandwich Islands are uninhabited, though a permanently manned Argentinian research station was located on Thule Island from 1976 to 1982 (for details, see "History" section above).
There are automatic weather stations on Thule (Morrell) Island and Zavodovski.
To the northwest of Zavodovski Island is the Protector Shoal, a submarine volcano.
South Sandwich Islands — 70South - Antarctic News, Antarctic Information, Interactive and Updated Daily...(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
The South Sandwich Islands consist of 11 islands (from north to south): Zavodovski, Leskov (the smallest), Visokoi, Candlemas, Vindication, Saunders, Montagu (the largest), Bristol, Bellingshausen, Cook and Thule.
The Russian Fabian von Bellingshausen became the first to see the three most northerly islands in 1819, and landed on Zavodovski Island, naming it for Lieutenant Ivan Zavodovski (captain of his ship, the "Vostok") on Christmas Eve of 1819.
The South Sandwiches are claimed by both Britain and Argentina, and about a million breeding pairs of chinstrap penguins can be found on Zavodovski Island alone, making it one of the world's largest penguin colonies.
Are there any volcanoes in Antartica or in the north pole?(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
It formed when caldera collapse took place, and the ocean has managed to break through the ring to form the crescent.
Other volcanoes in this southern region that are not really part of Antartica are Zavodovski, Visokoi, and Bristol Islands, in the South Sandwich island group, as well as Marion Island and Herd Island, in the southern Indian Ocean.
I noticed that your e-mail address is from a public library, so you should take a look at a couple of books that have good maps of the area.
These are a very interesting group; they include eleven islands, eight of which are volcanically active.
When we get to Zavodovski, we will be looking for relatively shallow water where we can make bottom trawls.
The bathymetric charts are not very accurate for such remote regions, and we expect that those for Bouvetoya, the next island we will visit, will be even less useful.
Emperor penguins dive underwater off Zavodovski island, part of the South Sandwich Islands in the sub-Antarctic, in this image from the Discovery Channel series, The Blue Planet: Seas of Life.
The island, where some two million penguins converge to breed, is home to the largest penguin colony in the world.
The nature series will air over two nights (at 9pm EST) tomorrow and on Monday.
Notice how the size of the waves as well as the angle they form coming off the islands correlates to the height of the islands.
For example, the peak on Zavodovski, the northernmost of the islands, stands at 1,807 feet (551 m), while the peak on Visokoi, the island just south of it, is 3,295 feet (1,005 m) tall.
The taller Visokoi peak produces a more substantial wake pattern.
