Signy Island

Protected since 1966, Signy Island hosts one of the longest continuous ecological monitoring programmes in the whole of Antarctica, running almost without a break since 1947 under the British Antarctic Survey, which has made it possible to document the impact of climate change on seabird and seal populations directly across more than seven decades. Before becoming a research station, the island held a Norwegian whaling station at Factory Cove between 1920 and the early 1930s, whose rusting remains stand today alongside the working British laboratory.