Paulet Island is a circularisland about 1.5 km (0.93 mi) in diameter, lying 4.5 km (2.8 mi) south-east of Dundee Island, off the north-eastern end of the Antarctic Peninsula. Because of its large penguin colony, it is a popular destination for sightseeing tours.
The island is composed of lava flows capped by a cinder cone with a small summit crater. Geothermal heat keeps parts of the island ice-free, and the youthful morphology of the volcano suggests that it was last active within the last 1,000 years.[1] The island is part of the James Ross Island Volcanic Group.[2]
In 1903 during the Swedish Antarctic Expedition led by Otto Nordenskiöld his ship Antarctic was crushed and sunk by the ice off the coast of the island. A stone hut built in February 1903 by shipwreck survivors, together with the grave of an expedition member, and the cairn built on the highest point of the island to draw the attention of rescuers, have been designated a Historic Site or Monument (HSM 41), following a proposal by Argentina and the United Kingdom to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting.[3] The shipwrecked crew of the Endurance planned to travel to the island and use stores there that were left by the Swedish Expedition, but the ice pack that they were stranded on eventually drifted too far east.[4]
^Armstrong, Jennifer (1998). Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. Knopf a imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company.
^"Paulet Island". BirdLife data zone: Important Bird Areas. BirdLife International. 2013. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
