Heard Island and McDonald Islands

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Heard Island and McDonald Islands (abbreviated as HIMI) (formally named the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald IslandsCIA World Factbook. Accessed 2009.01.04.) are a volcanic group of barren Antarctic islands , about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica, approximately 4099 km southwest of PerthCocky Flies, Geoscience Australia, 3845 km southwest of Cape Leeuwin, 4200 km southeast of South Africa, 3830 km southeast of Madagascar, 1630 km north of Antarctica, and 450 km southeast of Kerguelenhttp://www.distancefromto.net/.

They are in the Southern Ocean according to the Australian definition but not according to the International Hydrographic Organization definition.

Discovered in the mid-19th century, they have been territories of Australia since 1947, and contain the only two active volcanoes in Australian territory, one of which, Mawson Peak, is the highest Australian mountain.

The group's overall size is in area, and it has 101.9 km of coastline. The islands are uninhabited.

Geography

Heard Island, by far the largest of the group, is a bleak and mountainous island located at . Its mountains are covered in glaciers (the island is 80% covered with iceCIA World Factbook.) and dominated by Mawson Peak, a high complex volcano which forms part of the Big Ben massif. A July 2000 satellite image from the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) Thermal Alert Team, University of Hawai'i Heard Island Geology showed an active two kilometre long (and 50-90 metre wide) lava flow trending south-west from the summit of Big Ben.

Mawson Peak is the highest Australian mountain (higher than Mount Kosciuszko), and one of only 2 active volcanoes in Australian territory, the other being McDonald Island. A long thin spit named "Elephant Spit" extends from the east of the island.

There is a small group of islets and rocks about north of Heard Island, consisting of Shag Islet, Sail Rock, Morgan Island and Black Rock. They total approximately in area.

The McDonald Islands are located to the west of Heard Island at . The islands are small and rocky. In 1980 they consisted of McDonald Island ( high), Flat Island ( high) and Meyer Rock ( high). They totalled approximately in area. Like Heard Island, they were surface exposures of the Kerguelen Plateau.

The volcano on McDonald Island, after being dormant for 75,000 years, erupted in 1992 and erupted several times since. A satellite image taken in 2004 showed recent volcanic activity had joined McDonald Island and Flat Island into one island and generally doubled the land size of the resultant island.Australian government image of 2004 overlain by dimensions as at 1980 Its most recent eruption is thought to have been on 10 August 2005.

Heard Island and the McDonald Islands have no ports or harbours; ships must anchor offshore. The coastline is , and a territorial sea and exclusive fishing zone are claimed.

The islands have an Antarctic climate, tempered by their maritime setting. The weather is marked by low seasonal and daily temperature ranges, persistent and generally low cloud cover, frequent precipitation and strong winds. Monthly average temperatures at Atlas Cove (at the northwestern end of Heard Island) range from to , with an average daily range of to in summer and to in winter. The winds are predominantly westerly and persistently strong. At Atlas Cove, monthly average wind speeds range between around 26 to 33.5 km/h. Gusts in excess of 180 km/h have been recorded. Annual precipitation at sea level on Heard Island is in the order of 1.3 to 1.9 m; rain or snow falls on about 3 out of 4 days.HIMI official website.

The antipode to the central Mawson Peak of Heard Island is located less than West by south of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada.

History

Neither island cluster had visitors until the mid-1850s. Peter Kemp, a British sealer, is the first person thought to have seen the island. On 27 November 1833, he spotted it from the brig Magnet during a voyage from Kerguelen to the Antarctic and was believed to have entered the island on his 1833 chart.

An American sealer, Captain John Heard, on the ship Oriental, sighted the island on 25 November 1853, en route from Boston to Melbourne. He reported the discovery one month later and had the island named after him. Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang discovered the nearby McDonald Islands six weeks later, on 4 January 1854.

No landing was made on the islands until March 1855, when sealers from the Corinthian, led by Captain Erasmus Darwin Rogers, went ashore at a place called Oil Barrel Point. In the sealing period from 1855-1880, a number of American sealers spent a year or more on the island, living in appalling conditions in dark smelly huts, also at Oil Barrel Point. At its peak the community consisted of 200 people. By 1880, most of the seal population had been wiped out and the sealers left the island. In all, more than 100,000 barrels of elephant seal oil was produced during this period.

There are a number of wrecks in the vicinity of the islands. There is also a discarded building left from John Heard's sealing station which is situated near Atlas Cove.

The islands have been a territory of Australia since 1947, when they were transferred from the U.K. The archipelago became a World Heritage Site in 1997.

Administration and economy

The islands are a territory (Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands) of Australia administered from Hobart by the Australian Antarctic Division of the Australian Department of the Environment and Water Resources. They are populated by large numbers of seal and bird species. The islands are contained within a marine reserve and are primarily visited for research. There is no permanent human habitation.

From 1947 until 1955 there were camps of visiting scientists on Heard Island (at Atlas Cove in the northwest, which was in 1969 again occupied by American scientists and expanded in 1971 by French scientists) and in 1971 on McDonald Island (at Williams Bay). Later expeditions used a temporary base at Spit Bay in the northeast, such as in 1988, 1992–93 and 2004–2005.

With no population, there is no indigenous economic activity. The islands' only natural resource is fish; the Australian government allows limited fishing in the surrounding waters.CIA World Factbook. Despite the lack of population, the islands have been assigned the country code HM in ISO 3166-1 ( ISO 3166-2:HM) and therefore the Internet top-level domain .hm.

See also

• Australian Antarctic Territory
• Birds of Heard and McDonald Islands
• List of islands of Australia
• Sub-antarctic islands
• Heard Island Volcano

References

Further reading

• Scholes, Arthur. (1949) Fourteen men; story of the Australian Antarctic Expedition to Heard Island. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire.
• Smith, Jeremy. (1986) Specks in the Southern Ocean. Armidale: University of New England Press. ISBN 085834615X

External links

• Heard Island and McDonald Islands official website
• World heritage listing for Heard Island and McDonald Islands
• Image gallery of Heard Island and McDonald Island with high quality limited copyright images.
• MODIS satellite image, taken 30 September 2004 and showing a von Kármán vortex street in the clouds, caused by Mawson Peak's effect on the wind
• World Heritage Site entry
• Fan's page with further historical and geographic information and a map

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