Macquarie Island and its Features

Macquarie Island is a subantarctic ocean island situated in the southwestern Pacific ocean. Politically, it is the portion of the Australian island nation of Tasmania, which is part of Oceania. Macquarie Island is located around 1,501 kilometres southeast of Tasmania’s main island, almost halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. The island averages 967.99 mm of rainfall yearly and is typically cloudy for 7 to 8 months. The solid western breezes that flow over the island temper the climate.

History of Macquarie Island

Frederick Hassel borough, an Australian sealant, found the deserted island around 1810. He seized the island for the British and turned it over to the province of New South Wales government. Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, who acted as Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, was honoured with Macquarie Island.’ The earliest mapping of Macquarie Island was created in 1820 by Russian adventurer Fabian Bellingshausen. In 1820, Fabian Bellingshausen arrived on the island and exchanged his alcohol and food with the sealants for the island’s wildlife. The presence of Europeans had a significant impact on the ecosystem of Macquarie Island. The island quickly became a shooting field for seals and penguins, who were nearly killed to extinction from 1810 to 1919. Europeans also brought mice, rats, wild cats, rabbits, and other animals to the island. These invading species, in return, wreaked havoc on Macquarie Island’s natural biodiversity.

Flora And Fauna of Macquarie Island

Macquarie Island’s flora shares taxonomic connections with ocean organisms found on another sub-Antarctic Island. Most plants on Macquarie Island don’t reach a height of more than 1 m, while certain grass species, such as Poa foliosa, can reach a height of more than 2 m in protected regions. There are believed to be 45 types of vascular plants, 80 species of mosses, 141 types of lichen, and 50 kinds of liverworts on the island. Bog, marsh, tall grasses, grassland, and herb fields make up the island’s primary vegetation. The elevated beach slopes of the island are covered in a mire of shallow and porous peat banks known as ‘featherbeds.’

More than 80,000.0 seals from several species, including Southern elephant seals, Antarctic fur seals, subantarctic fur seals, and New Zealand fur seals, live on Macquarie Island.

In contrast to these, southern humpback whales and orcas are regularly seen. The Imperial penguin and Macquarie shags are two indigenous producers on the island. Birdlife International has recognised Macquarie Island as a Crucial Bird Area because it supports approximately 3.5 million young mating seabirds from 13 different species.

Geography of Macquarie Island

CentralMacquarie Island is 128.1 square kilometres in size, with a length of 34.1 kilometres and a maximum width of 5.1 kilometres. There are several high highlands in the north and south regions of the island. These highlands rise to around 150.1 to 200.1 metres in height and are connected by a thin isthmus. Mounts Hamilton and Fletcher are situated in the south section of the island and reach a height of 411m, and Mountain Elder, located on the island’s northeast coast slope and reaches an altitude of 386m, is among the island’s high peaks. Aside from that, the island has several tiny glacial lakes. Volcanic pillows, basalt, lava streams, sediment, and other extrusive materials cover the island’s southern side. Macquarie Island is located at the gathering spot of the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates. It is a visible section of the underwater Macquarie Spine. The main island and its outlying islands are geologically unusual. They are the only spot on the globe where mantle rocks from 6.1 kilometres beneath the ocean bottom are constantly revealed on the top.

The island’s tectonic evolution started around Ten million years ago and continues now, with the island becoming prone to earthquakes, with regular earthquakes and a quick pace of advancement. Macquarie Island is thought to be the only known ophiolite series to have developed within a significant oceanic basin. As a result, Macquarie Island’s geology is viewed as a communication medium between the ophiolites of continent crusts and that of oceanic crusts.

Conclusion

For two main reasonsMacquarie Island has exceptional universal importance. Because it is the only area on Earth where rocks from the Earth’s mantle are continuously revealed above sea levels, it gives a unique chance to study geologic characteristics and mechanisms of oceanic shell development and plate barrier movements. In these peculiar exposures, you may find great examples of pillow igneous rocks and other extrusive rocks. Second, the lonely and windswept scenery of high rocky cliffs, lakes, and dramatic variations in vegetation gives a remarkable vision of untamed, natural beauty, complemented by large flocks of species such as penguins and seals.