Marion Island
| Marion Island | |
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| Waters | Indian Ocean |
| Archipelago | Prince Edward Islands |
| Geographical location | 46 ° 54 ′ S , 37 ° 44 ′ E |
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| length | 25 km |
| width | 18 km |
| surface | 290 km² |
| Highest elevation | Mascarin Peak 1230 m |
| Residents | up to 50 (ward staff) <1 inh / km² |
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The Marion Island ( English Marion Island ) is the larger and more southern of the two Prince Edward Islands in the southern Indian Ocean . Politically it belongs to South Africa and there to the Western Cape Province . The island is approximately 1700 km from mainland Africa .
The island is about 25 kilometers long in the east-west direction, up to about 18 kilometers wide in the north-south direction and has an area of 290 km². Marion Island is about 21 kilometers southwest of Prince Edward Island and consists of two young shield volcanoes and numerous side craters, which give the island a hilly character. The highest point is the Mascarin Peak at 1230 m , the second highest point is the Resolution Peak at 1185 m above sea level. Prior to the renaming, which became official in 2003, these peaks were called State President Swart Peak and Jan Smuts Peak .
history
The island was discovered by chance on March 4, 1663 by the Dutch navigator Barend Barendszoon Lam and named after his ship Maerseveen . However, he determined the position of the island incorrectly, so that it was "discovered" again on January 13, 1772 by the French Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne and named after him. James Cook also sighted the island in December 1776 , but it was not until a few years later that seals and whalers set foot on it for the first time. Seals were hunted on the island on a large scale until about 1930. In 1908, 70 shipwrecked hunters established the village of Fairbairn Settlement on the north coast. Since 1948 South Africa has maintained the permanent research and weather station Marion Island on the north-east coast ( Transvaal Cove ). The island's volcanoes were initially thought to be extinct, but in 1980 the station's staff observed an eruption. Gas eruptions were last detected in June 2004.
Climate table
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Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Marion Island
Source: wetterkontor.de
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fauna
Annihilation of the cat population
In 1949 five house cats were brought to Marion Island to combat a mouse plague in the station. However, the cats reproduced quickly, and in 1977 there were about 3,400 cats on the island, which ate petrels instead of mice, so that the birds on the island were threatened with extinction. Some species of petrels have in fact already died out on Marion Island, and so a " feline extermination program " was launched: some cats were infected with a highly specific disease called Feline Panleucopenia , bringing the number of cats to around in 1982 600 reduced. The remaining cats were killed by night hunting, and in 1991 only eight cats could be caught in twelve months. It is believed that there are no more cats on Marion Island these days.
On April 9, 2013, the South African government declared the archipelago with its 12-mile zone a Marine Protected Area through the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs . A protection under the national law of South Africa had already been announced in Government Gazette No. 32198. This was based on Section 43 of the Marine Living Resources Act ( Act No. 18/1998 ).
Invertebrates in fresh water on the island
So far, the following species of invertebrates have been identified in the freshwater habitats on the island:
- Crustacea: 4 species
- Anomopoda
- Copepoda
- Harpaticoida
- Ostracoda
- Hexapoda
- Acari
- Mollusca
- Annelida
- Lumbricillus sp.
- Vejdovskyella sp.
- Rotifera
- Monogononta
- Cephalodella eva
- Cephalodella gibba
- Cephalodella sp.
- Collotheca ornata
- Collotheca ornata cornuta
- Colurella colurus compressa
- Dicranophorus sp.
- Encentrum gulo
- Encentrum lutra
- Epiphanes senta
- Euchlanis dilatata
- Lecane flexilus
- Lepadella triptera
- Lindia torulosa
- Notholca labis
- Ptygura crystallina
- Ptygura longicornis
- Resticulata gelida
- Scaridium longicaudum
- Trichocera brachyura
- Trichotria tetractis
- Bdelloidea
- Adineta barbata
- Adineta sp.
- Macrotrachela sp.
- Philodina sp.
- Rotaria rotatoria
- Monogononta
- Nematoda: 6 as yet undescribed species
- sp. 1 'whip nematode'
- sp. 2 'whip nematode with long tail'
- sp. 3 'small nematode from wallows'
- sp. 4 'a different bacterial feeder'
- sp. 5 'medium nematode with stylet'
- sp. 6 'cup-shaped stoma with feet'
- Tardigrada
- Dactylobiotus
- Hybsibius cf. dujardin
- Isohypsibius sp.
- Gastrotricha
- Chaetonotus sp.
- Platyhelminthes: 5 as yet undescribed species
- sp. 1 'kipper-tie'
- sp. 2
- sp. 3
- sp. 4th
- sp. 5
- Crustacea: 4 species
Web links
- Marion Island. Description of the island and research station with images. South African National Antarctic Program (SANAP), accessed November 19, 2016.
- Marion Island ( memento of March 17, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (English).
- Marion Island in the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (English).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Elwyn Jenkins: Falling into Place. The Story of Modern South African Place Names . New Africa Books, Claremont 2007, ISBN 978-0-86486-689-9 , Marion Island, a distant piece of South Africa, pp. 47 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ Prince Edward Islands declared a Marine Protected Area. In: Media Releases. Department of Environmental Affairs, Republic of South Africa, April 9, 2013, accessed May 17, 2017 .
- ^ Marine Living Resources Act, 1998 (Act No. 18 of 1998): Draft Notice declaring the Prince Edward Islands Marine Protected Area . Notice 421 of 2009. In: Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (Ed.): Government Gazette . No. 32198 , May 8, 2009, p. 125 f . (English, online [PDF; 78 kB ; accessed on May 17, 2017]). online ( memento of the original from November 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Herbert JG Dartnall, Valdon R. Smith: Freshwater Invertebrates of Sub-Antarctic Marion Island . In: African Zoology . tape 47 , no. 2 , October 2012, ISSN 1562-7020 , p. 203–215 , doi : 10.3377 / 004.047.0207 (English).
