O'Brien Island is a small rocky island in the
South Shetland Islands
The South Shetland Islands are a group of Antarctic islands with a total area of . They lie about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, and between southwest of the nearest point of the South Orkney Islands. By the Antarctic Treaty of 1 ...
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 lies south-west of
Aspland Island and rises to 540 m. A strong marine channel, named
Tasman Rip, runs between O'Brien Island and
Eadie Island.
The name dates back to the survey of the South Shetlands carried out by Edward Bransfield and William Smith in 1820, when it was applied to O'Brien, Eadie and Aspland Islands as a group. It is now established in international usage.
Important Bird Area
The island has been identified as an
Important Bird Area (IBA) by
BirdLife International because there are records (from 1977) of it supporting large
breeding colonies of
chinstrap penguins (21,000 pairs) and
southern fulmar
The southern fulmar (''Fulmarus glacialoides'') is a seabird of the Southern Hemisphere. Along with the northern fulmar, ''F. glacialis'', it belongs to the fulmar genus ''Fulmarus'' in the family Procellariidae, the true petrels. It is also kno ...
s (8000 pairs).
See also
*
List of Antarctic and Subantarctic islands
References
Islands of the South Shetland Islands
Important Bird Areas of Antarctica
Seabird colonies
Penguin colonies
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