What does the South Sandwich Islands mean?

1775, Captain james cook discovered this archipelago while searching for the legendary southern continent. In the face of "fog, snowstorm, cold and everything that may endanger navigation", Captain Cook left the South Sandwich Islands without hesitation. During his voyage in the Southern Ocean, Captain Cook undertook a task: to find the magical southern continent and declare it to be owned by Britain. But the sea is far away, and Captain Cook only found a series of islands. 1775 In June, Cook came to South Georgia. At first, he was full of hope that South Georgia would prove to be "part of the magical continent", but later it was found that it was not. Realizing that "this island is not worth exploring", he continued to step up his voyage. He wrote in the record: "The coldness, desolation and desolation given by nature to this area are far beyond imagination."

This is a group of penguins, with quite a few races and numbers.

1775 On the last day of June, the fog in front of the ship cleared and land appeared! Cook wrote: "Because I firmly believe that there will be a land near the pole, which will serve as the foundation of an iceberg covering the vast southern ocean, I have come to the conclusion that the land we saw, which I later named' Sandwich Continent', is a group of islands, or a corner of a magical continent." As it turns out, this is just a group of islands, which is also the origin of the name of the South Sandwich Islands. The English transliteration of "sandwich" is "sandwich".

It is true that the South Sandwich Islands are inaccessible, even Captain Cook, who dared to explore, gave up, but it is not a place where birds don't lay eggs, and even a paradise for many animals. The largest number and variety of penguins are 3 million striped cheek penguins, more than 52,000 pairs of long-browed penguins, 50,000 pairs of Adelie penguins and thousands of white-browed penguins. Plus flying seabirds: giant mandarin fish, there are 1500 pairs on Kandur island; 654.38+ ten thousand pairs of silver-gray storm storks; There are spotted mandarin fish, snow swallow, storm petrel, cormorant, skua, seagull and tern. In addition, there are five species of pteropods: seals (there are about 500 cubs on Zavo Dovski Island), leopard seals, Antarctic elephant seals, crab-eating seals and Weddell seals-all of which are nourished by the krill-based food chain in the Southern Ocean.

This is also a paradise for seals.

Striped penguins are also called "mountaineers" because every ship near the South Sandwich Islands may see a long row of moving black spots on the towering and steep glaciers, as if looking up at the mountaineers climbing on the snow-capped mountains at the foot of the mountain. In fact, these little guys are "striped penguins"; In summer, when two million striped-cheeked penguins gather in Zavo Dovski Island, which is only 25 square kilometers, it may be the "biggest, noisiest and most pungent" colony in the world.

The stormy waves cruelly threw the surfing penguins to the cliff, which also made it difficult for ships to dock. Brave volcanologists also rely mainly on aerial surveys to study the South Sandwich Islands. However, difficulties and dangers are opportunities for the fearless. They will use their precious time of four months every year to avoid ice floes and visit the island. There is an Antarctic sailor named jerome Ponce Sai who has been keen on fighting or playing with the Southern Ocean for 30 years. At the end of last century, it was he who recorded the number of various animals in the South Sandwich Islands in detail.

Every time, Pang Sai sailed a 20-meter-long steel-hulled sailboat to South Sandwich. At the moment of landing on the island, he stepped on the accelerator to make the bow close to the cliff and jumped onto the land before the waves and boats fell.