Zavodovski Island

The island is defined almost entirely by its volcano: an almost perfect volcanic cone rises directly from the sea to around 551 metres, steaming persistently at the summit, and the visual impact of this symmetric peak emerging from open ocean without any intervening continental shelf is unlike anything else in the South Atlantic, a geological event that makes you understand why early sailors considered these islands ominous.

The chinstrap penguin colony here is the largest in the world for this species by a significant margin, and from the ship the entire island appears to be moving: thousands of birds packed into every available space from the shoreline to the steaming summit crater, the density so high that individual birds are impossible to distinguish without optical aid.

The smell of the penguin colony reaches you before you see the birds clearly, a thick and unmistakable presence that intensifies dramatically when the wind drops and hangs over the landing area with a permanence that becomes part of your memory of the place, an olfactory marker that no amount of subsequent washing seems to fully remove.

Fur seals occupy the shoreline and lower slopes in large numbers that seem disproportionate to the available beach area, and navigating between the seal colonies and the penguin pathways requires constant attention as the seals show not the slightest inclination to give way to either penguins or humans, treating all visitors as obstacles rather than threats.

The volcanic activity is visible throughout the island: steam vents persist on the upper slopes marking geothermal pathways through the rock, warm ground appears in areas where the geothermal heat surfaces close to the surface, and occasional reports of increased activity have prompted temporary access restrictions in recent years as a precautionary measure.

Zavodovski is further from the main South Georgia landing sites than any of the other places in this collection, and the crossing can be rough in the extreme, taking 10-15 hours in confused Southern Ocean swell from the nearest South Georgia anchorages, but the combination of the world's largest chinstrap colony and an active volcano makes the journey one of the most dramatic available anywhere in the sub-Antarctic.

The island was named after the Russian ship Zavodovski that discovered it in 1819 during a Russian naval survey, part of a tradition of early Russian and British exploration that gave these remote islands a series of names that still reflect the multilingual origins of Antarctic exploration.

The world's largest chinstrap penguin colony, home to over a million breeding pairs during peak season, an almost incomprehensible density of life on an active volcanic cone.

An active volcanic stratovolcano rising directly from the sea, providing a dramatic geological backdrop to one of the largest penguin colonies on Earth with steam and geothermal features visible throughout.

Part of the South Sandwich Islands, one of the most remote and volcanically active archipelagos in the world with a chain of active and dormant volcanoes stretching southward.