Green Island is one of the

Berthelot Islands The Berthelot Islands are a group of rocky islands, the largest long, lying south-west of Deliverance Point, off the west coast of Graham Land, Antarctica. They were discovered by the French Antarctic Expedition, 1903–05, under Jean-Baptiste ...

group, lying off the west coast of

Graham Land Graham Land is the portion of the Antarctic Peninsula that lies north of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This description of Graham Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the British Antarctic Place-names Committee and ...

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 contine ...

Description

The island is about 20 ha in area. It lies 150 m north of the largest of the Berthelot Islands group, some 3 km off the Graham Coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is 520 m long from north to south and 500 m wide from east to west, rising to a rounded peak 83 m high. It rises steeply on all sides, with precipitous cliffs on the southern and eastern sides.

Antarctic Specially Protected Area

It is protected as

Antarctic Specially Protected Area An Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) is an area on the continent of Antarctica, or on nearby islands, which is protected by scientists and several different international bodies. The protected areas were established in 1961 under the Antarct ...

(ASPA) No.108 because of its vegetation which was described as “probably the most luxuriant anywhere on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula”. On its north-facing slopes it has well-developed banks of moss turf formed by '' Polytrichum strictum'' and '' Chorisodontium aciphyllum'' overlying

peat Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficien ...

more than a metre deep.

Antarctic hair grass ''Deschampsia antarctica'', the Antarctic hair grass, is one of two flowering plants native to Antarctica, the other being '' Colobanthus quitensis'' (Antarctic pearlwort). They mainly occur on the South Orkney Islands, the South Shetland Island ...

grows in small patches on the steep, rocky north-western corner of the island near a

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

of 500–600

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, one of the largest on the Antarctic Peninsula.

References

Antarctic Specially Protected Areas Islands of Graham Land Seabird colonies {{GrahamCoast-geo-stub