Antarctic Treaty (Environment Protection) Proclamation 2005
Part 37Antarctic specially protected area No. 137
Start here
Get a plain-English read of Part 37
Turn the raw legal text into a practical explanation grounded in Antarctic Treaty (Environment Protection) Proclamation 2005.
Part 37 Antarctic specially protected area No. 137
North-west White Island, McMurdo Sound.
Latitude 78 00 S, longitude 167 20 E.
White Island, part of the McMurdo volcanic complex, is situated approximately 20 km south-east of the edge of the McMurdo Ice Shelf and 25 km south-east of Hut Point, the location of McMurdo Station (United States) and Scott Base (New Zealand) on Ross Island. The roughly triangular island is approximately 30 km long and 15 km wide at its maximum, and rises to a maximum elevation of 762 m in several locations.
The island is predominantly ice-covered with most of the rock outcrops being in the north, and is completely surrounded by the permanent shelf ice, between 10 m and 100 m in thickness, of the McMurdo Ice Shelf and Ross Ice Shelf. Black Island is situated 2.5 km west of White Island, separated by the shelf ice of White Strait.
The Area includes 130 km2 of the shelf ice and open-water cracks of both the Ross Ice Shelf and McMurdo Ice Shelf up to 5 km offshore north-east, north and west from the White Island coast. The Area extends along the coast from a northern point on the east side of Cape Spencer-Smith (78° 00 43 S, 167° 32 42 E) 19 km south to the southern-most significant coastal outcrop of rock on the north-west side of White Island (78° 09 08 S, 167° 05 00 E). At this southern point, the boundary extends approximately 1 km due west to 167° 00 00 E longitude, from where it extends due north to 78° 05 00 S latitude, after which the boundary continues north at a constant distance of 5 km from the shore of White Island to the eastern extremity of the Area at 77° 58 48 S, 167° 41 35 E. The White Island coast is distinguished by a change in surface slope where the transition between the floating ice-shelf and land occurs: the transition is in some places gradual and indistinct, and the exact position of the coast is not precisely known. For this reason the coastal (generally east) boundary of the Area is considered to follow the line of the coast as evidenced by a surface elevation rise towards the land of two metres above the average elevation of the adjacent McMurdo Ice Shelf.