This is most likely due to the decline of the Antarctic Fur Seal since the late 18th century and Baleen whales in the 20th century.

Two skuas and a giant petrel fighting over a dead Antarctic Fur Seal

The Antarctic Fur Seal, once reduced to a small population on South Georgia after being hunted towards extinction, has returned to the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula.

Other predators include South African and Antarctic Fur Seals.

* 65, 000 Antarctic Fur Seals ( around 1 for every 6 m² of the island )

Seals include the Antarctic Fur Seal ( Arctocephalus gazella ) and Sub-Antarctic Fur Seal ( Arctocephalus tropicalis ) in large numbers, Leopard Seal ( Hydrurga leptonyx ), Weddell Seal ( Leptonychotes weddellii ), the huge Southern Elephant Seal ( Mirounga leonina ), and Crabeater Seal ( Lobodon carcinophagus ).

Marine mammals include five breeding species of seal ; the Southern Elephant Seal, Australasian Fur Seal, Subantarctic Fur Seal, Antarctic Fur Seal and the rare New Zealand Sea Lion of which 95 % of the world's population breed on the Auckland Islands.

* The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals ( 1972 )

The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals is part of the Antarctic Treaty System.

Abbreviated as the " Antarctic Seals " agreement, the convention had the objective to promote and achieve the protection, scientific study, and rational use of Antarctic seals, and to maintain a satisfactory balance within the ecological system of Antarctica.

Antarctic krill is the keystone species of the ecosystem of the Southern Ocean, and is an important food organism for whales, seals, Leopard Seals, fur seals, Crabeater Seals, squid, icefish, penguins, albatrosses and many other birds.

The species is still protected by the governments in whose waters it resides ( Australia, South Africa, France ) and by the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals in waters south of 60 ° S. The animal is also listed in Appendix 2 of CITES.

Populations are recovering rapidly, though, in most areas whilst under the protection of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals.

The Weddell seal is protected by the Antarctic Treaty and the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals.

It is surrounded by the southern waters of the World Ocean – alternatively ( depending on source ), it is washed by the Southern ( or Antarctic ) Ocean or the southern Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.

Currently thousands of tourists and hundreds of scientists a year rely on the Antarctic transportation system.

* The Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities ( 1988 ) ( signed in 1988, not in force )

* The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty was signed October 4, 1991 and entered into force January 14, 1998 ; this agreement prevents development and provides for the protection of the Antarctic environment through five specific annexes on marine pollution, fauna and flora, environmental impact assessments, waste management, and protected areas.

# REDIRECT Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty

Some research has been done on Antarctic phytoplankton as a carbon sink.

The first human born in the Antarctic was Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen born on 8 October 1913 in Grytviken, South Georgia.

The Antarctic region had no indigenous population when first discovered, and its present inhabitants comprise a few thousand transient scientific and other personnel working on tours of duty at the several dozen research stations maintained by various countries.

These include the Antarctic Treaty and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, and Wetlands.

Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice ; ... a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest, ... an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye.

* 1959 – Cold War: Opening date for signature of the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent.

The total number of degree confluences is 64, 442, of which 21, 543 are on land, 38, 409 on water, and 4, 490 on the Antarctic and Arctic ice caps.

The British Antarctic Survey operates a transcontinental air link between Port Stanley Airport and the Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula and servicing also other British bases in the British Antarctic Territory using a de Havilland Canada Dash 7.

* 1961 – Cold War: the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent, comes into force after the opening date for signature set for the December 1, 1959.

* 1978 – Emilio Palma, first person born on the Antarctic continent

He found a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland and, in a partially self-funded research expedition in 1972, went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic aboard the research vessel RRS Shackleton.

Similarly the warming of the oceans is extending the oceanic thermocline layer of tropical oceans into the Arctic and Antarctic waters, preventing the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminating the algal blooms of phytoplankton on which oceanic food chains depend.

Interbreeding with the Macaroni Penguin has been reported at Heard and Marion Islands, with three hybrids recorded there by a 1987-88 Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition.

Interbreeding with the Indopacific subspecies of the Southern Rockhopper Penguin ( E. chrysocome filholi ) has been reported at Heard and Marion Islands, with three hybrids recorded there by a 1987 – 88 Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition.

They also occupy much of Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, including the northern South Shetland Islands, Bouvet Island, the Prince Edward and Marion islands, the Crozet Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, the Heard and McDonald Islands.

The only human inhabitants of the islands are the staff of a meteorological and biological research station run by the South African National Antarctic Programme on Marion Island.

Breeding grounds are also found at Marion Island in the Prince Edward Islands ( where there is an overlap with Antarctic fur seals ), Crozet Islands and the Macquarie Island.

The islands situated between 60 ° S latitude parallel to the south and the Antarctic Convergence to the north, and their respective Exclusive Economic Zones fall under the national jurisdiction of the countries that possess them: South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ( United Kingdom ; also an EU Overseas territory ), Bouvet Island ( Norway ), and Heard and McDonald Islands ( Australia ).

Kerguelen Islands ( France ; also an EU Overseas territory ) are situated in the Antarctic Convergence area, while the Falkland Islands, Isla de los Estados, Hornos Island with Cape Horn, Diego Ramírez Islands, Campbell Island, Macquarie Island, Amsterdam and Saint Paul Islands, Crozet Islands, Prince Edward Islands, and Gough Island and Tristan da Cunha group remain north of the Convergence and thus outside the Antarctic region.

However, the region is visited by more than 40, 000 tourists annually, the most popular destinations being the Antarctic Peninsula area ( especially the South Shetland Islands ) and South Georgia Island.

* Liège Island, in the Antarctic

The Belgica, whether by mistake or design, became locked in the sea ice at 70 ° 30 ′ S off Alexander Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula.

There is no native population on the islands ; the present inhabitants are the British Government Officer, Deputy Postmaster, scientists, and support staff from the British Antarctic Survey who maintain scientific bases at Bird Island and at the capital, King Edward Point, as well as museum staff at nearby Grytviken.

* February 11 – Burgess Ice Rise lying off the west coast of Alexander Island, Antarctica is first mapped by the British Antarctic Survey ( BAS ).

* January 23 – Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross, charting the eastern side of James Ross Island, reaches a Farthest South of 78 ° 09 ' 30 " S.

* January 6 – Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross discovers Snow Hill Island.

* January 21 – Peter I Island in the Antarctic first sighted by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen.

* April – – English merchant Anthony de la Roché, blown off course having rounded Cape Horn eastabout, makes the first discovery of land south of the Antarctic Convergence, landing on South Georgia and ( probably ) Gough Island.

Map of Tricontinental Chile with possessions in Oceania ( Easter Island ), South America and the claim in Antarctica: Chilean Antarctic Territory

* One overseas territory ( territoire d ' outre-mer, or TOM ): the French Southern and Antarctic Lands divided into 5 districts: Kerguelen Islands, Crozet Islands, Amsterdam Island and Île Saint-Paul, Adelie Land, and the Scattered islands ( Banc du Geyser, Bassas da India, Europa, Juan de Nova, Glorioso, and Tromelin ).

Commonwealth and off-shore protected areas in the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory, the Christmas Island Territory, the Cocos ( Keeling ) Islands Territory, the Norfolk Island Territory and the Australian Antarctic Territory are managed by Parks Australia, a division of the Department of the Environment and Water Resources, with the exception of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which is managed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, a separate body within the department.

* Cape Vostok, the west extremity of the Havre Mountains and the northwest extremity of Alexander Island in Antarctic

* Seymour Island, an island off the tip of Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula

Volcanic observations on Scott Island in the Antarctic Ocean, Polarforschung, 60 ( 2 ), 82 – 83.