Antarctica

Vega Island

After leaving Hope Bay, we sailed south to False Island Point on Vega Island and arrived on December 15. It is a volcanic island located in the Weddell Sea on the northeast side of the Palmer archipelago, just north of the much larger James Ross Island.

Discovered in 1902, False Island Point had been thought to be a separate island until 1945. But it connects to the main part of Vega Island to the right with a narrow isthmus.

Vega Island is fairly small but an important site for paleontologists. Dinosaur fossils have been discovered there. False Island Point is also home to Adélie and Gentoo penguins, and to Weddell seals.

False Island Point on the left connects to the main part of Vega Island on the right with a narrow isthmus barely visible

The top of this flat-topped volcanic promontory, called a “tuya”, is just north of False Island Point. It is thought to have formed as molten magma intruded under the ice sheet and cooled rapidly. All this was happening sometime after the Antarctic Plate moved into its more or less present location at the South Pole beginning some 100 million years ago.