Southern Ocean Islands

Subantarctica & Southern Ocean Islands -

The islands are located between 60°S and the Antarctic Treaty area and are therefore managed by their own government. Ships should take stringent measures to prevent the introduction of non-native species (e.g. rats) or parasites, which in some places has already been at the expense of local wildlife. The best way is to comply with the Antarctic rules.

All UK vessels travelling to Antarctica can contact the UK State Department. Boats with at least one UK citizen on Board can also submit applications. For more information and useful facts about Antarctic cruising, see www.gov.uk/visits-to-antarctica-how-to-apply-for-a-permitfor They are now designed for small yacht trips.

South Ocean

The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, the southern parts of the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Pacific and adjacent waters that surround Antarctica. Undiminished by any other continent's land mass, the smallest necking of the Southern Ocean is the 600 mile (approx. 1,000 km) Drake Passage between South America and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Roaring Forties" and "Furious Fifties" are located in a circular polar orbit and a western oceans flow area, generally referred to as West Wind Drift or circumpolar currents. Its seabed comprises a mainland shelves, usually less than 160 nautical mile ( "260 km") in width, reaching its widest point of more than 1600 nautical mile ( "2,600 km") near the Weddell and Ross Seas.

More to the south there are ocean pools up to 4,500 meters in depth, characterized by ocean elevations and often mountain crests. The South Sandwich Trench on the east side of the South Sandwich Islands also has small high reliefs.

Further hallmarks of the landscape are ocean plateaux rising from the ocean basin at a depth of less than 2,000 meters below the surface and forming shallow areas, often clad in relatively thick sedimentary sediments. These plateaux are the most vast of which is the Campbell Plain, which stretches south-east of New Zealand and south beyond the Campbell Islands.

Turbulence in the Southern Ocean is intricate. Waters chilled from the Arctic Ocean by coolers, escaping radiant heat and catabatic wind sink and run north along the seabed and are substituted on the upper side by an equivalent amount of hotter waters from the Indian, Pacific and PacificOcean.

They meet at the Antarctic Convergence, where circumstances favor the growth of plankton, which consists of silica algae and other unicellular growth. In the higher ocean the most important organisms in the dietary system are the small, shrinking, small krill. On the seabed of the coastal area, there are sedentary hydrozoa, coral, sponges and bryozoa, as well as forage, crab-like spiderfish and isopod, the ring spider parasite, echinoid, starfish and a large number of molluscs.

Among the rarest kinds of catfish are hagfishes and ice floats. There are many deepwater fisheries known just South of the Antarctic Convergence, but only three, one spotted lamppost and two barracudas, appear to be restricted to this area.