Bates Island is a narrow island long lying east of
Jurva Point,
Renaud Island, in the
Biscoe Islands
Biscoe Islands is a series of islands, of which the principal ones are Renaud, Lavoisier (named ''Serrano'' by Chile and ''Mitre'' by Argentina), Watkins, Krogh, Pickwick and Rabot, lying parallel to the west coast of Graham Land and extending ...
of
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...
. It was first accurately shown on an
Argentine government chart of 1957, and was named by the
UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee
The UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee (or UK-APC) is a United Kingdom government committee, part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, responsible for recommending names of geographical locations within the British Antarctic Territory (BAT) and ...
in 1959 for Charles C. Bates, an American oceanographer who has specialised in
sea ice studies.
Important Bird Area
A circular 500 ha tract of land and sea, centred on an islet lying about 700 m to the south of Bates, has been identified as an
Important Bird Area (IBA) by
BirdLife International because it supports a
breeding colony of
Antarctic shag
The Antarctic shag (''Leucocarbo bransfieldensis''), sometimes referred to as the imperial cormorant, king cormorant, imperial shag, blue-eyed shag or Antarctic cormorant, is the only species of the cormorant family found in the Antarctic. It is s ...
s, with about 150 pairs recorded there in 1986.
See also
*
List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands
References
Islands of the Biscoe Islands
Important Bird Areas of Antarctica
Seabird colonies
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