Buckle Island is one of the three main islands in the uninhabited
Balleny Islands group located in the
Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-small ...
. It lies north-west of
Sturge Island and south-east of
Young Island, some north-north-east of
Belousov Point on the Antarctic mainland. The island forms some parts of the
Ross Dependency
The Ross Dependency is a region of Antarctica defined by a circular sector, sector originating at the South Pole, passing along longitudes 160th meridian east, 160° east to 150th meridian west, 150° west, and terminating at latitude 60th para ...
, claimed by
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
.
Description
The island is roughly triangular in shape, with long east and west coasts and a short north coast. It is about wide in the north, with a maximum length of .
It is of volcanic origin, and is still volcanically active, the last eruption being in 1899.
The northernmost point is
Cape Cornish. Several small islets also lie in the channel separating Cape Cornish and Young Island, the largest of which is
Borradaile Island
Borradaile Island () is one of the Balleny Islands. It was the site of the first landing south of the Antarctic Circle, and features the "remarkable pinnacle" called ''Beale Pinnacle'', near Cape Beale on its south-eastern coast, and Cape Scoresby ...
. Several small islets lie off the island's southern extremity, Cape McNab, including
Sabrina Islet
Sabrina Island is the largest of three small islets lying south of Buckle Island in the Balleny Islands of Antarctica and are part of New Zealand's Ross Dependency. Sabrina Island was named after Thomas Freeman's cutter when John Balleny's squ ...
and the tall
stack of The Monolith. Both Buckle Island and Sabrina Islet are home to colonies of
Adelie and
chinstrap penguins.
See also
*
List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands
References
*
External links
*
Stratovolcanoes of New Zealand
Volcanoes of the Southern Ocean
Islands of the Balleny Islands
Volcanoes of the Balleny Islands
Volcanic islands
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