Lost among the cold waters of theSouthern AtlantictheBouvet island (in Norwegian Bouvetøya) is considered one of the most remote and inaccessible places of the entire planet. Just over a rock of origin volcanicis completely covered with glaciers, and is located almost halfway between the coast of the far south of Africa and the vast Antarctic desert.
Position and morphology
The island of Bouvet is just over 54th south parallel, just above the Antarctic polar circle. We can therefore well imagine the type of climate that we would find: a climate subpolar and oceanic very cold and extremely humid, characterized by intended rainfallalmost daily, especially snowy for most of the year.
The surface is equal to 49 square kilometersrather small dimensions, which, to make a comparison, slightly exceed the much more known and close Ischia (with 46.3 square kilometers of extension) and includes several minor islets and rocks surrounding the dark jagged walls.
The island is of origin volcanicor, to be exact, is the top of a real volcano. The intense tectonic activity of the region is certainly due to the presence of the neighbor South-western Indian Oceanic Call.
Given the rigid and hostile climate, the species vegetables They are very similar to those that we could find in the not too distant Antarctica, and are mainly made up of lichens and small plant forms that grow in the limited portions of land free from perennial ice: the entire surface of the island is in fact covered for 93% by glaciers.
On the other hand, the island is an important habitat for numerous species of birds Marinito which are added those of the mammalslike the Orsina Antarctic Orsina, the marine elephant and the cetaceans that populate the cold Antarctic waters.
The discovery
The first sighting of the island is due to the French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozierwhich marked its existence in January of 1739 while driving an expedition to the austral seas. On board his boat, Bouvet warned land between dense banks of fog and a black and frighteningly agitated sea, and he was unable to dock or understand if it was actually an island or a flap of Antarctica. For decades, his report was wrapped in mystery, so much so that he was thinking several times about an error or the sighting of an iceberg, and this had the most disparate legends come to the island. After more than a century and other enigmatic sightings, the island was occupied for a short period by A Norwegian crewwho claimed it for his country in 1927, baptizing it, in fact, Bouvetøya.
Not far from the island of Bouvet, about halfway between this and the Islands of Prince Edoardofurther north-east, in 1979 a US satellite pointed out a very short but intense lightning of light. The phenomenon, typical of anuclear explosion Atmospheric, it was classified as a “sail accident” (from the name of the sacks that the United States used in the past decades for the monitoring of nuclear explosions) and, although the data were attributable precisely to the execution of a nuclear test, no country has ever claimed responsibility for it. Even today it is not clear whether it was a rare atmospheric phenomenon or a test, but there is no doubt that the event has further fueled the mysterious fame of the island.
