Overview
- A Polarstern expedition team identified a rocky island in the northwestern Weddell Sea after diverting for shelter near Joinville Island during rough weather.
- The crew confirmed the feature was land, not an iceberg, and fully surveyed it using a multibeam echo sounder and drone photogrammetry from about 150 meters away.
- Measurements show the island is about 130 meters long, 50 meters wide, and rises roughly 16 meters above the water.
- Nautical charts had shown only an undefined hazard in the area and placed it about one nautical mile from its true position, which helps explain why ships avoided the spot without knowing it was land.
- AWI will complete a formal naming process, then publish exact coordinates and submit updates to international charts and datasets such as the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean, noting that ice cover can hide rock from satellites and that regional summer sea ice has shrunk since 2017 without a proven link to this discovery.