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Murray Island, also sometimes known as Bluff Island, is an island 6 mile long lying at the south-west side of
Hughes Bay Hughes Bay is a bay lying between Cape Sterneck and Cape Murray along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is wide and lies south of Chavdar Peninsula and north of Pefaur (Ventimiglia) Peninsula, indenting the Danco Coast on the west si ...
, 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 ...
. The feature has been known to
sealers Sealer may refer either to a person or ship engaged in seal hunting, or to a sealant; associated terms include: Seal hunting * Sealer Hill, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica * Sealers' Oven, bread oven of mud and stone built by sealers around 180 ...
operating in the area since the 1820s, although it was shown on charts as part of the mainland. In 1922 the whale catcher ''Graham'' passed through the channel separating it from the mainland, proving its insularity. It was named in association with Cape Murray, the seaward extremity of the island.


Important Bird Area

A 98 ha ice-free site on the western side of a small peninsula on the northern coast of the island was designated the Bluff Island
Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...
(IBA) by
BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...
because, in 1989, it supported a breeding colony of about 180 pairs 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.


See also

* List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands


Map

* British Antarctic Territory. Scale 1:200000 topographic map. DOS 610 Series, Sheet W 64 60. Directorate of Overseas Surveys, Tolworth, UK, 1978.


References


SCAR Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica
Islands of Graham Land Danco Coast Important Bird Areas of Antarctica Seabird colonies {{DancoCoast-geo-stub