I know I already kinda wrote a song about this (and isopods), but still – the Mother Nature Network has joined the voices marveling over the fact that the closer we look at Antarctica, the more full of life it becomes:
Antarctica’s remote South Georgia Island boasts 90 percent of the world’s fur seals, half of the world’s elephant seals, is navigated by vast populations of blue whales, sperm whales and killer whales, and has beaches that can be packed shoulder-to-shoulder with nesting penguins. In total, it contains nearly 1,500 recorded species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth.
It’s difficult to believe that until recently, this biological treasure was believed to be nothing more than an “inhospitable lump of rock.”
In fact, researchers now believe that South Georgia Island contains more species than anywhere else in the Southern Ocean, and may be the most biologically diverse remote island in the world — even more diverse than the storied Galapagos Islands, according to the Independent.