Forgotten Rocks
Tuesday morning. Surf thunders against the steep cliffs of Penguin Island. Each broadside washes the icy crag. Despite the gentle sun, the wind is bitterly cold. The deep blue sea below, even colder.
Yet this lost castle of stone is home to dozens of species of seabirds. Macaroni Penguins, to fulfill its namesake. But albatross, sheathbills, and petrels too. The waters of the Southern Ocean that encircle the island are trafficked by elephant seals, orcas and schools of frigid bluefin tuna — their sharp, torquing bodies right at home in this alien world.
Penguin Island has a population of zero humans. It’s so hard to reach, in fact, it is thought to be devoid even of mice and rats that humans have unwittingly transported to almost every island on Earth.
And, in that clear Tuesday morning sun, a new species of bird slipped by, unnoticed, and snapped a picture of this forgotten rock. A Planet Labs dove.
Penguin Island is one of the most remote places on Earth. But for all its loneliness, it does have some distant cousins.
In the center of the Atlantic, in much warmer waters, is Ascension Island — resting right on top of the mid-Atlantic ridge, the same deep-Earth powerhouse that is building Iceland to the north.
Ascension was a prized shipping stop-over in the days of scurvy. Its small capital, Georgetown, is home to most of the island’s ~900 full-time residents. Up the slopes, a cosmopolitan colony of plants — dropped off by Ascensions many passersby — has taken up root.
In the waters below, Ascension’s rare, mid-Atlantic reef hosts strange behaviors, including a triggerfish that feeds in mobs reminiscent of piranha. In all, more than 100 reef fish somehow managed to reach Ascension from as far away as the Indian Ocean.
In the vast open ocean between Penguin and Ascension Islands, lies the Island of Gough. With its mix of warm and cool waters, Gough is home to more than 50 bird species, including the critical endangered Gough Bunting.
Gough is also home to an annually rotating crew of six people, not unlike the International Space Station. In this fashion, it remains among the most remote destinations that is continuously inhabited.
At Planet, imagery of these remote localities is not the most in demand we have to offer. But we watch them all the same. Unlike other commercial platforms, Planet’s constellation of Doves provides a persistent monitoring capability.
Life on Penguin, Ascension, and Gough Islands is fairly regular for the huge number of seabirds and a handful of humans that brave their profound isolation.
But when life changes — be it a new airstrip, unforeseen landslide or urgent shipwreck—Planet will be watching.
