- published: 20 Aug 2014
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The Antarctic Peninsula is the northernmost part of the mainland of Antarctica. At the surface, it is the biggest, most prominent peninsula in Antarctica as it extends 1300 km from a line between Cape Adams (Weddell Sea) and a point on the mainland south of Eklund Islands. Beneath the ice sheet covering the Antarctic Peninsula, it consists of a string of bedrock islands that are separated by deep channels whose bottoms lie at depths considerably below current sea level and are joined together by a grounded ice sheet. Tierra del Fuego, the southern most tip of South America, lies only about 1000 km away across the Drake Passage.
The Antarctic Peninsula is currently dotted with numerous research stations and has multiple claims of sovereignty. The peninsula forms part of disputed and overlapping claims by Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom. None of these claims have international recognition and the respective countries do not currently actively pursue enforcement.
The first sighting of Antarctic Peninsula is disputed but apparently occurred in 1820. The most likely first sighting of the Antarctic mainland, which was also the Antarctic Peninsula, was probably during an expedition of the Russian Imperial Navy that was captained by Thaddeus von Bellinghausen. The party did not recognize what they thought was an icefield covered by small hillocks as the mainland on 27 January 1820. Edward Bransfield and William Smith were the first to chart a part of the Antarctic Peninsula just three days later on the 30 January 1820. The location was later to be called Trinity Peninsula, the extreme northeast portion of the peninsula. The next confirmed sighting was by John Biscoe who named the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula, Graham Land, in 1832.
The Antarctic ( /ænˈtɑrktɪk/ or /ænˈtɑrtɪk/) is a polar region, specifically the region around the Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica and the ice shelves, waters, and island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence. The region covers some 20% of the Southern Hemisphere, of which 5.5% (14 million km2) is the surface area of the continent itself.
The maritime part of the region constitutes the area of application of the international Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), where for technical reasons the Convention uses an approximation of the Convergence line by means of a line joining specified points along parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude. The implementation of the Convention is managed through an international Commission headquartered in Hobart, Australia by an efficient system of annual fishing quotas, licenses and international inspectors on the fishing vessels, as well as satellite surveillance.