Antarctica, the 5th largest, and the least populated continent… We all know that Antarctica exists at the bottom of the globe, however, we normally don’t know where Antarctica starts and ends. Because of Antarctica’s geographic location — almost antipode to the world’s center hot spots like New York and London — people usually are not interested in which continents this island belongs to. — Antarctica? South America? Africa? Oceania? — so, today we will talk about the borders of the Antarctica continent.
-British South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
In the southern ocean, there are generally 4 groups of islands between Antarctica and the other continents like South America, Africa, and Oceania. Because all 4 island groups are outside of the Antarctic Circle, they are controversial, and the first one is the British South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. Located 1350km southwest of the world-famous Falkland Islands, it has a small population mainly scientists and is also one of 14 British overseas territories. These islands are very controversial because these islands are on neither the South American plate nor the Antarctica plate. But usually, people considered these as part of Antarctica since they are closer to Antarctica than South America(2000km away from nearest South America — part of Argentina, however, only 1500km away from Antarctica), also it is below the Antarctic Convergence Line or ACL which is the line that defined the expansion of the Antarctic ocean current — if the land is under the one landmass’ ocean current, they usually consider the land as part of the landmass’ continent. In addition, the northwestern location, Falkland is usually considered part of South America due to the same reasons.
-Norwegian Bouvet Island
The second island between the two continents is Bouvet Island between Antarctica, Africa, and South America. This island is very hard to define due to its weird location. First, this island is the farthest island from another landmass in the world, which means that it is all far from 3 continents of Antarctica, Africa, and South America. It is 1730 km away from Antarctica part of Queen Maud Land, 2500 km away from Africa part of South Africa, and 4560 km away from South America part of Argentina. So, because it is very far away (over 1500 km away from the actual continent), it has no meaning to define a continent. In addition, because there’s no population living on the island, it doesn’t matter at all. However, to give some idea, usually, most geographists define Antarctica, because simply it’s under the Antarctic ocean current.
We already went half through defining Antarctica, we will draw the rest the other day. Thank you. Stay tuned.
