Is there any wildlife on Berkner Island?

While virtually no flora or fauna can survive on Berkner’s barren ice surface, the surrounding sea ice supports notable wildlife. Gould Bay on the north-western coast of Berkner is home to one of the world’s southernmost emperor penguin colonies. The colony consists of about 8,000 emperor penguins, and ALE sets up an annual camp in the area. Their camp provides a perfect opportunity for photographers and researchers to see these incredible animals up close!

For researchers and expedition teams, these penguins are often the only signs of life in an otherwise stark polar desert. Indeed, most South Pole expeditions will never see them as teams head away from their habitats, not towards them!

Human activity and scientific research on Berkner Island

Berkner Island has no indigenous or permanent human population. It remains uninhabited to this day – and that probably won’t change.

Human activity on the Berkner has been always only been sparse and transient, limited to exploration parties and scientific field teams. After the initial IGY survey in 1957–58, decades passed with few visitors. In the 1990s, scientific interest in Berkner Island grew due to its valuable environmental record locked in ice. In the 1994–95 field season, glaciologists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute drilled two intermediate-depth ice cores on Berkner, one on each of its domes. These cores (151 m and 181 m deep) provided a climatic history spanning 700–1,200 years. They offered insight into past weather patterns and atmospheric composition in this part of Antarctica.

Between 2002 and 2005, an international team returned to drill a deep ice core on the southern dome (Thyssenhöhe). The core reached approximately 948 m, all the way down to the base of the ice sheet. The recovered core preserves tens of thousands of years of climate data for scientists to analyse. These projects required establishing temporary field camps on Berkner’s ice – likely the longest continuous human presence the island has seen. Even then, the teams were small. Just a handful of scientists and support staff would stay only for one season at a time.

Aside from ice core science, there have been no permanent facilities built on Berkner Island. Furthermore, unlike on the Antarctic continent, no country operates a research station on the island due to the logistical challenges.

Header photograph by Pixabay, via Pexels (CC0).