Bouvet Island is an uninhabited subantarctic volcanic island and dependency of Norway located in the South Atlantic Ocean, south of Antarctic Convergence. It lies at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and is the most remote island in the world, approximately 2,600km south-southwest of the coast of South Africa and approximately 1,700km north of the Princess Astrid Coast of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. It has an area of 49 square kilometres, of which 93 percent is covered by a glacier.
The centre of the island is an ice-filled crater of an inactive volcano. Some skerries and one smaller island, Larsøya, lie along the coast. Nyrøysa, created by a rock slide in the late 1950s, is the only easy place to land and is the location of a weather station. The island was first spotted in 1739 by Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, after whom it was later named. The first Norvegia expedition landed on the island in 1927 and claimed it for Norway. After a dispute with the UK, it was declared a Norwegian dependency in 1930.
The island became a nature reserve in 1971. It has also been designated as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because of its importance as a breeding ground for seabirds. In 1978-1979 there were an estimated 117,000 breeding penguins on the island, consisting of macaroni penguin and, to a lesser extent, chinstrap penguin and Adélie penguin. The only non-bird vertebrates on the island are seals, specifically the southern elephant seal and Antarctic fur seal, which both breed on the island.
About the stamp
The stamp is part of the series Norwegian Meteorological Institute 150th Anniversary, designed by Bruno Oldani, and issued on June 10, 2016.
References
Bouvet Island - Wikipedia
Sender:
Sent from ??? (Norway), on 24.07.2016
Does Bouvet Island have a post office? Is this the postmark of Bouvet Island?
ReplyDelete