Campbell Island

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Campbell Island
Māori : Motu Ihupuku
Map of Campbell Island with its surrounding islands
Map of Campbell Island with its surrounding islands
Waters Pacific Ocean
Geographical location 52 ° 32 '  S , 169 ° 9'  E Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '  S , 169 ° 9'  E
Campbell Island (New Zealand Outlying Islands)
Campbell Island
length 17 km
width 17 km
surface 112.86 km²
Highest elevation Mount Honey
558  m
Residents uninhabited
Typical landscape on Campbell Island
Typical landscape on Campbell Island
Weather station at Beeman Cove , unmanned and automatic since 1995

Campbell Island ,called Motu Ihupuku in the Māori language , is the main island of the Campbell Islands , a remote, sub-Antarcticisland group in the southern Pacific Ocean belongingto New Zealand .

Today nobody is allowed to enter the island without a permit.

geography

Campbell Island is located approximately 590 km southeast of Stewart Island , the third largest island in New Zealand and the southernmost inhabited island in the country. The Auckland Islands are around 270 km northwest of Campbell Island and the mainland of Antarctica extends around 1900 km further south around the South Pole . So is Campbell Iceland still on the undersea continent Zealandia to the whole New Zealand counts.

The 17 km long and up to 17 km wide island extends over a total area of ​​112.86 km² and has a strongly rugged coastal landscape, with two inlets extending  deep into the center of the island on the east side, Perseverance Harbor and Northeast Harbor . Two smaller inlets located in the southeast of the island are called Southeast Harbor and Monument Harbor .

The south and west coast are characterized by numerous bays and steep cliffs and the entire island is characterized by a mountain landscape, which finds its highest point with the 558 m high Mount Honey . The small islands surrounding Campbell Island do not exceed a size of 625 m in length and are of minor importance. Together with Campbell Island they form the Campbell Islands :

geology

Geologically speaking, Campbell Island is the remnant of a volcanic cone and is located in the southern area of ​​the submarine Campbell Plateau , which belongs to Zealandia . Because of the strong erosion by the ocean, the currents of which run largely in a west-east direction due to the Roaring Forties , the entire western half of the archipelago, which formed about 640 million years ago ( Proterozoic ) , has already been eroded. The extent to which the island was affected by the last ice age in the Pleistocene has not been conclusively clarified, but the landscape of the island, which appears to be Ice Age, was most likely formed by glaciers . In addition to erosion from the sea, erosion on land also plays a major role. While the nutrient-rich peat layer on which the plants thrive is many meters thick in the valleys, it is already below the 2-meter limit on many slopes and the mountain tops themselves are very often free of this loose layer.

Most of the island consists of volcanic rocks in the form of solidified lavas and volcanic breccias . The lavas are made of phonolite and the breccias mostly show trachytic features. On the northern flank of Mount Menhir, a narrow deposit of gabbro with olivine , the oldest rock on this island, stretches to the coastline . In the western part of the island there are some sediment zones near the coast. Their basis is formed by Cenozoic remains of heavily eroded quartz conglomerates with carbonate fractions. Layers of sandstone and limestone lie above it. These sediment sequences are crossed by dykes .

climate

Climate diagram

The mean annual temperature is between 6 ° C and 7 ° C. Thanks to the extremely maritime climate, the temperature fluctuations between summer (10 ° C) and winter (5 °) are limited. The average annual precipitation is around 1454 mm. Because of the approximately 250 rainy days per year, the climate is very poor in sunshine. There are only around 700 hours of sunshine a year, which makes the place one of the poorest in sunshine on earth. Due to its location in the Roaring Forties , strong winds have a decisive influence on the island's climate.

history

Campbell Island was discovered by whaler Frederick Hasselburg in January 1810 . The island's largest estuary, Perseverance Harbor , still bears the name of his brig today . He named the island itself after its client Robert Campbell & Co. from Sydney . After the discovery of a large seal colony, the hunt for these animals, although becoming increasingly uneconomical, continued until around 1830, mainly to capture their fur. The New Zealand government tried in vain to prevent the seals from being slaughtered with the help of patrols. After the "period of exploitation" followed a "period of exploration". Numerous expeditions explored the island's flora and fauna, tried to find out whether the area had ever belonged to the great southern continent , and observed the Venus transit of 1874. Between 1868 and 1923, British and New Zealand ships occasionally called at the island Entertaining stations for castaways.

Although sheep , goats and pigs were abandoned on the island before 1895 , they never survived long. That year, however, a certain J. Gordon from Gisborne leased the entire island for a period of 21 years and set up a farm. It started with a few hundred head of cattle before reaching a maximum population of 8,000 in 1913. In 1907 the consequences of this grazing for the island were examined for the first time. In the 1910s, the last whaling station on North West Bay was closed and the farm era ended in the 1930s when the leases were no longer extended because, for example, transporting the animals made further operations uneconomical.

During the Second World War , a coastal observation station was operated on the island in Tucker Cove . After their closure at the end of the war, the buildings were used as a weather station until a new station in Beeman Cove opened in 1958, replacing the old one. Until the end of 1994, when the station became fully automated, several meteorologists worked and lived on the island continuously. After further expeditions, the island was in 1954 at a nature reserve in 1998 for World Natural Heritage of UNESCO explained.

Flora Fauna

flora

Most of the island is covered with native tussock grass. In valleys but there are also a type of heather plants that Dracophyllum , a kind of Redness plants , namely only in Chile occurring and New Zealand Coprosma and Myrsine (an endemic species of Myrsinengewächse ) that reach in sheltered spots tree height, ie up to five meters get high. An introduced spruce species can reach a height of up to six meters. There are also numerous species of fern and moss.

fauna

New Zealand sea lions on the southwest coast
A male elephant seal wallows in the tussock grass

Campbell Island is home to many species of birds, some of which are very rare. In addition to petrels , penguins and king albatrosses, there are also the flightless Campbell's duck ( Anas nesiotis ), the Campbell's shag ( Phalacrocorax campbelli ) and the tiny Campbell's snipe - endemic bird species that only occur on the island. After the rats have been exterminated, the numerous bird populations are slowly recovering. There are also significant colonies of New Zealand sea lions ( Phocarctos hookeri ) on Campbell Island.

Animal cleanup

In the last years of the 20th century, one of the most ambitious animal cleansing operations ever took place on the entire island. After all sheep, goats and pigs were removed from the island, Campbell Island was officially declared "rat-free" in May 2003. The rodents on the island had developed into the densest population of rats in the world within 200 years. Because of this, rat poison was successfully dropped by plane . Now the island serves u. a. as a settlement area for the rarest native bird species.

Campbell ducks reintroduced into the wild

In September 2004, 50 were Campbell ducks reintroduced on this island. This species of duck was originally native to the island, but was exterminated there by rats that ate the eggs and chicks. The duck species has been considered extinct since 1944, but was rediscovered in 1975 on Dent Island , which is just 23 hectares off the coast of Campbell Island . About 60 to 100 individuals and 25 breeding pairs had survived there.

A second release of 55 Campbell Ducks took place in September 2005. The majority of the ducks released in 2004 appear to have survived their first year on Campbell Island . The first evidence of successful reproduction on this island is from 2006. Chicks were observed in January 2006 and a little later one chick, three young ducks and two nests with eggs. Including the camp ducks kept in human care, the population of this duck is now back to over 200 individuals.

literature

  • Patrick Marshall : New Zealand and adjacent islands . VII Section 1. Carl Winter's University Bookstore , Heidelberg 1912, B. Outlying Islands of New Zealand (English, online [PDF; 6,7 MB ; accessed on June 7, 2018]).
  • Sub-Antarctic Islands - Campbell Island . In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Wellington 1966 ( online [accessed June 7, 2018]).
  • Derek Fell : Campbell Island: Land of the Blue Sunflowers . David Bateman , Auckland 2003 (English).

Web links

Commons : Campbell Island  - Collection of Images
  • Campbell Island . (JPG 4.0 MB)Land Information New Zealand,accessed on June 7, 2018(English, detailed topographic map ofCampbell Islandwith its small neighboring islands and rocky islands).
  • Campbell Island . Department of Conservation,accessed June 7, 2018.

Individual evidence

  1. Coordinates and longitudes were determined using Goggle Earth Pro Version 7.3.1.4507 on June 7th, 2018
  2. a b Campbell Island . (JPG 4.0 MB) Land Information New Zealand , accessed on June 7, 2018 (English, detailed topographic map of Campbell Island with its small neighboring islands and rocky islands).
  3. ^ Marshall : New Zealand and adjacent islands . 1912, p.  62-64 .
  4. Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): Sub-Antarctic Islands - Campbell Island . 1966 (English).
  5. ^ Jock Phillips : Subantarctic islands - Campbell Island . In: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , September 22, 2012, accessed June 7, 2018 .
  6. Birdlife Fact Sheet about the Campbell Duck. Uploaded February 14, 2009