The waters once ran red with whale blood - now South Georgia is a conservation success story

Sky News

13-03-2025

Technically, the hundred-mile-long, 20 mile-wide British overseas territory of South Georgia is uninhabited.
Only a few visiting scientists and government fisheries inspectors occupy the island all year round.
But from a wildlife perspective, it's anything but.
Its shores are home to the largest number of marine birds and mammals on the planet.
Lying 800 miles east off the Falkland Islands and a thousand miles north of Antarctica, it's one of the few fragments of land between that vast frozen continent and the rest of the world.
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The part of the South Atlantic in which it sits is one of the most food-rich oceans in the world, fed by powerful circulating currents, and it's full of shrimp-like Antarctic krill.
"Krill feeds the blue whales, humpback whales, fin whales. It also feeds the gentoo penguins, macaroni penguins, chinstrap penguins and the fur seals," says Martin Collins, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, and former head of the South Georgia government, speaking to me from his office at King Edward Point on the island.
The island also has some of the largest and most significant populations of elephant seals, king penguins and several species of albatross and petrel - the hardiest of ocean-going seabirds.
The island has been in the headlines after the world's largest iceberg, A23a, ran aground off its south-west coast.
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Concern over impact of iceberg on island's wildlife
There's a concern it could impact wildlife on the island - but the timing is fortuitous, says Mr Collins.
"It's the end of the breeding season now, which means the impacts on penguins at that part of the island will be lessened.
"There may be a little bit of impact, particularly on gentoo penguins, which still forage around the island during the winter."
From a wider conservation point of view, South Georgia is one of the world's stand-out success stories.
Until the 1960s, it was a major hub for whaling. Thousands of whales were caught off its coasts and processed at a number of whaling stations - the scale of the slaughter such that the bays around the island were red with whale blood.
The whalers introduced reindeer for food that nibbled and trampled unique plant life that sustained many of the island's endemic wildlife.
Stowaway rats plundered the eggs and chicks of penguins and other ground nesting birds (there are no trees).
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Whales returning in large numbers
The South Georgia pipit, the world's most southerly songbird, was driven to the brink of extinction.
But before the abandoned whaling stations have even rusted away, whales have begun returning to South Georgia in large numbers.
A campaign of air-dropping poisoned bait across the inaccessible island has eradicated the rats and the pipits are booming.
The seas around South Georgia were once heavily fished. The worst for wildlife were long-line vessels trying to hook high-value Chilean seabass.
Call for outright ban on fishing
Albatross and petrels would dive for the bait and be caught and drowned.
Since 2012, the government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands have policed a 500,000 square-mile marine-protected area around the islands where most fishing is now banned.
A few vessels are licensed to catch shrimp-like krill and seabass but only in winter when most predators are absent and under strict controls.
Some conservationists are calling for fishing to be banned outright.
However, the South Georgia government argues it's the income from limited fishing licences that allows them to protect and monitor the exclusion zone.
Crucial at a time when funding from central government is scarce and unlikely to increase.
The key threat now is the rapidly changing climate around South Georgia.
"There's evidence that the distribution of krill is moving a little further south gradually over time," says Mr Collins.
"We need to be really mindful of that changing climate."
But he's optimistic too. Despite warmer oceans, numbers of some species are booming. Especially whales and fur seals.
"I've just had two king penguins walking past the windows as we were talking," he says.