Heard Island

Heard and McDonald Islands*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Heard Island, from NASA World Wind
Type	Natural
Criteria	viii, ix
Reference	577
Region**	Asia-Pacific
Inscription history
Inscription	1997  (21st Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Heard Island and McDonald Islands (abbreviated as HIMI^[1]) (formally named the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands^[2]) are a volcanic group of barren Antarctic islands , about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica, approximately 4099 km southwest of Perth^[3], 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 Kerguelen^[4].

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 372 square kilometres (144 sq mi) in area, and it has 101.9 km of coastline. The islands are uninhabited.

Geography

Location of Heard and McDonald Islands

Map of Heard and McDonald Islands^[5]

Heard Island, by far the largest of the group, is a 368-square-kilometre (142 sq mi) bleak and mountainous island located at 53°06′00″S 73°31′00″E / 53.1°S 73.5166667°E / -53.1; 73.5166667. Its mountains are covered in glaciers (the island is 80% covered with ice^[6]) and dominated by Mawson Peak, a 2,745-metre (9,006 ft) 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 ^[7] 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 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of Heard Island, consisting of Shag Islet, Sail Rock, Morgan Island and Black Rock. They total approximately 1.1 square kilometres (0.4 sq mi) in area.

The McDonald Islands are located 44 kilometres (27 mi) to the west of Heard Island at 53°02′20″S 72°36′04″E / 53.03889°S 72.60111°E / -53.03889; 72.60111. The islands are small and rocky. In 1980 they consisted of McDonald Island (230 metres (750 ft) high), Flat Island (55 metres (180 ft) high) and Meyer Rock (170 metres (560 ft) high). They totalled approximately 2.5 square kilometres (1.0 sq mi) 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.^[8] Its most recent eruption is thought to have been on 10 August 2005.^[9]

Heard Island and the McDonald Islands have no ports or harbours; ships must anchor offshore. The coastline is 101.9 kilometres (63.3 mi), and a 12-nautical-mile (22 km) territorial sea and 200-nautical-mile (370 km) exclusive fishing zone are claimed.^[6]

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 0.0 °C (32 °F) to 4.2 °C (39.6 °F), with an average daily range of 3.7 °C (38.7 °F) to 5.2 °C (41.4 °F) in summer and −0.8 °C (31 °F) to 0.3 °C (32.5 °F) 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.^[10]

The antipode to the central Mawson Peak of Heard Island is located less than 70 kilometres (43 mi) 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.^[6] 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 65,000-square-kilometre (25,000 sq mi) marine reserve and are primarily visited for research. There is no permanent human habitation.^[6]

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.^[11] 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

• LeMasurier, W. E.; Thomson, J. W. (eds.) (1990). Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans. American Geophysical Union. pp. 512 pp. ISBN 0-87590-172-7. 

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

Look up heard island and mcdonald islands in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Heard Island and McDonald Islands official website
• World heritage listing for Heard Island and McDonald Islands
• Heard Island and McDonald Islands entry at The World Factbook
• Heard Island and McDonald Islands at the Open Directory Project
• Wikimedia Atlas of Heard Island and McDonald Islands
• Heard Island and McDonald Islands travel guide from Wikitravel
• 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

Links to related articles v • d • e States and territories of Australia States and mainland territories Australian Capital Territory · Jervis Bay Territory · New South Wales · Northern Territory · Queensland · South Australia · Tasmania · Victoria · Western Australia · External territories Ashmore and Cartier Islands · Australian Antarctic Territory · Christmas Island · Cocos (Keeling) Islands · Coral Sea Islands · Heard Island and McDonald Islands · Norfolk Island v • d • e World Heritage Sites in Australia Australian fossil mammal sites at Naracoorte and Riversleigh · Blue Mountains · Fraser Island · Gondwana Rainforests of Australia · Great Barrier Reef · Heard Island and McDonald Islands · Kakadu National Park · Lord Howe Island Group · Macquarie Island · Purnululu National Park · Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens · Shark Bay · Sydney Opera House · Tasmanian Wilderness · Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park · Wet Tropics of Queensland · Willandra Lakes Region v • d • e Peri-Antarctic countries and overseas territories Argentina · Australia (Heard Island and McDonald Islands • Macquarie Island) · Chile · Falkland Islands · French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Kerguelen Islands) · New Zealand (New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands) · Norway (Bouvet Island) · South Africa (Prince Edward Islands) · South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands "Peri-Antarctic" (meaning "close to the Antarctic") does not include territorial claims on Antarctica itself. Coordinates: 53°00′S 73°30′E / 53°S 73.5°E / -53; 73.5