Bird Island is a man-made platform off the coast of

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

between

Walvis Bay Walvis Bay ( en, lit. Whale Bay; af, Walvisbaai; ger, Walfischbucht or Walfischbai) is a city in Namibia and the name of the bay on which it lies. It is the second largest city in Namibia and the largest coastal city in the country. The c ...

and

Swakopmund Swakopmund (german: Mouth of the Swakop) is a city on the coast of western Namibia, west of the Namibian capital Windhoek via the B2 main road. It is the capital of the Erongo administrative district. The town has 44,725 inhabitants and covers ...

. It serves as a breeding ground for birds (primarily

Cape cormorant The Cape cormorant or Cape shag (''Phalacrocorax capensis'') is a bird endemic to the southwestern coasts of Africa. It breeds from Namibia south to southern Western Cape. In the nonbreeding season, it may be found as far north as the mouth of t ...

s) and yields

guano Guano (Spanish from qu, wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. G ...

, which is collected and sold.

History

Bird Island was conceived and constructed by Adolf Winter, a German who emigrated to

South West Africa South West Africa ( af, Suidwes-Afrika; german: Südwestafrika; nl, Zuidwest-Afrika) was a territory under South African administration from 1915 to 1990, after which it became modern-day Namibia. It bordered Angola (Portuguese colony before 1 ...

(now known as Namibia) in 1912. Winter took a train from Swakopmund to nearby Walvis Bay and saw a natural offshore formation called Bird Rock, covered in guano from many birds. On the return trip, he noticed the guano had been washed away by the sea and saw a business opportunity. Bird Island began as a wooden platform measuring four meters square, three meters above the sea. Winter finished this initial construction in March 1930. One year later he had enlarged the platform to 16 meters square, and by August 1931 had extended it to 1600 square meters. Guano was collected and sold annually, and expansion of the platform continued at a slower pace until 1937, when a large shipment of timber allowed building the platform out to its current size of 17,000 square meters.

Economics

The guano collected from Bird Island is considered high quality for its high nitrogen content relative to other guano collection facilities in the region. It is cleaned in Swakopmund to remove feathers and other debris, ground to a powder, and exported to Belgium for US$285 per ton.Plaque at the National Marine Aquarium of Namibia, Swakopmund The platform yields approximately 650 tons of guano annually.

References

Islands of Namibia Geography of Erongo Region Artificial islands of Africa Uninhabited islands {{Namibia-geo-stub