Auckland Islands
The Auckland Islands is an archipelago of New Zealand, lying south of the South Island. The main Auckland Island, occupying, is surrounded by smaller Adams Island, Enderby Island, Disappointment Island, Ewing Island, Rose Island, Dundas Island, and Green Island, with a combined area of. The islands have no permanent human inhabitants.
The islands are listed with the New Zealand Outlying Islands. The islands are an immediate part of New Zealand, but not part of any region or district, but instead Area Outside Territorial Authority, like all the other outlying islands except the Solander Islands.
Ecologically, the Auckland Islands form part of the Antipodes Subantarctic Islands tundra ecoregion. Along with other New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, they were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998.
Geography
The Auckland Islands lie south of Stewart Island, and from the South Island port of Bluff, between the latitudes 50° 30' and 50° 55' S and longitudes 165° 50' and 166° 20' E.They include Auckland Island, Adams Island, Enderby Island, Disappointment Island, Ewing Island, Rose Island, Dundas Island, and Green Island, with a combined area of. The islands are close to each other, separated by narrow channels, and the coastline is rugged, with numerous deep inlets.
Auckland Island, the main island, has an approximate land area of, and a length of. It is notable for its steep cliffs and rugged terrain, which rises to over. Prominent peaks include Cavern Peak, Mount Raynal, Mount D'Urville, Mount Easton, and the Tower of Babel. The southern end of the island broadens to a width of.
Here, the narrow channel of Carnley Harbour separates the main island from the roughly triangular Adams Island, which is even more mountainous, reaching a height of at Mount Dick. The channel is the remains of the crater of an extinct volcano, and Adams Island and the southern part of the main island form the crater rim. The main island features many sharply incised inlets, notably Port Ross at the northern end.
The group includes numerous other smaller islands, notably Disappointment Island and Enderby Island, altogether covering.
Most of the islands have a volcanic origin, with the archipelago dominated by two 12-million-year-old Miocene shield volcanoes, subsequently eroded and dissected. These rest on older volcanic rocks 15–25 million years old with some older granites and fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks from around 100 million years ago.
Islands
The following table includes named islands according to Land Information New Zealand.| Location | Area |
| Auckland Island | 45,916.6 |
| Adams Island | 9,695.8 |
| Enderby Island | 695.9 |
| Disappointment Island | 289.5 |
| Rose Island | 80.2 |
| Ewing Island | 58.3 |
| Ocean Island | 11.9 |
| Detached Rock | 7.5 |
| Adams Rocks | 7.5 |
| Masked Island | 5.7 |
| Figure of Eight Island | 5.3 |
| Column Rocks | 5.2 |
| Dundas Island | 4.9 |
| Sugar Loaf Rocks | 4.8 |
| Monumental Island | 4.3 |
| Lantern Rocks | 3.9 |
| Green Island | 3.0 |
| Compadre Rock | 2.8 |
| Frenchs Island | 1.9 |
| Five Sisters Rocks | 1.9 |
| Yule Island | 1.6 |
| Friday Island | 1.6 |
| Pinnacle Rocks | 1.5 |
| Pillar Rock | 1.2 |
| Blanche Rock | 1.0 |
| Amherst Rock | 0.8 |
| Shag Rock | 0.5 |
| Beehive Rock | 0.4 |
| Beacon Rock | 0.3 |
| Davis Island | 0.1 |
| Archer Rock | 0.1 |
| Total | 56,816.1 |
Climate
Port Ross features a subpolar oceanic climate. Like many other Subpolar oceanic climates, Port Ross, along with the Auckland Islands in general, are characterised by the near-constant overcast weather and never being too hot or too cold.This borders on an extremely mild-wintered, maritime-influenced tundra climate.
Carnley Harbour also features a subpolar oceanic climate, though it exaggerates the features shown in Port Ross, as it is much wetter and a lot more affected by ocean-moderation.
The Auckland Islands have a fairly constant cool and wet weather year-round, with neither winter being excessively cold nor summer excessively hot. The climate is most similar to that seen in the Faroe Islands and Aleutian Islands.
History
Discovery and early exploitation
Evidence exists that Polynesian voyagers first discovered the Auckland Islands. Traces of Polynesian settlement, possibly dating to the 13th century, have been found by archaeologists on Enderby Island. This is the most southerly settlement by Polynesians yet known.The whaler, captained by Abraham Bristow, rediscovered the islands in 1806, finding them uninhabited. Bristow named them "Lord Auckland's" on 18 August 1806 in honour of his father's friend William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland. Bristow worked for the businessman Samuel Enderby, the namesake of Enderby Island. The following year Bristow returned on to claim the archipelago for Britain. The explorers Dumont D'Urville and James Clark Ross visited in 1839 and in 1840 respectively.
Whalers and sealers set up temporary bases, the islands becoming one of the principal sealing stations in the Pacific in the years immediately after their discovery. By 1812, so many seals had been killed that the islands lost their commercial importance and sealers redirected their efforts towards Campbell and Macquarie Islands. Visits to the islands declined, although recovering seal populations allowed a modest revival in sealing in the mid-1820s.
The sealing era lasted from 1807 till 1894, during which time 82 vessels are recorded as visiting for sealing purposes. Some 11 of these ships were wrecked off-shore. Relics of the sealing period include inscriptions, the remains of huts, and graves.
Settlement
Now uninhabited, the islands saw unsuccessful settlements in the mid-19th century. In 1842, a small party of 70 Māori and their Moriori slaves from the Chatham Islands migrated to the archipelago, surviving for about 20 years or so on sealing and flax growing. Samuel Enderby's grandson, Charles Enderby, proposed a community based on agriculture and whaling in 1846. This settlement, established at Port Ross in 1849 and named Hardwicke, lasted only two and a half years. Māori and Moriori settlement continued until 1866, when most of the Māori and some of the Moriori returned to the Chatham Islands; however, most of the Moriori settled on Stewart Island, where some of their descendants continue to live today.The Auckland Islands were part of the Colony of New Zealand under the Letters Patent of April 1842, which fixed the southern boundary of New Zealand at 53° south, but they were then excluded by the New Zealand Constitution Act 1846, which defined the southern boundary at 47° 10' south; however, they were again included by the New Zealand Boundaries Act of 1863, an act of the Imperial Parliament at Westminster that extended the boundaries of the colony once more.
Shipwrecks
The, captained by Thomas Musgrave, was wrecked in Carnley Harbour in 1864. Madelene Ferguson Allen's narrative about her great-grandfather, Robert Holding, and the wreck of the Scottish sailing ship, wrecked in the Auckland Islands a few months later in 1864, counterpoints the Grafton story. François Édouard Raynal wrote Wrecked on a Reef.In 1866, one of New Zealand's most famous shipwrecks, that of the General Grant, occurred on the western coast. Ten survivors waited for rescue on Auckland Island for 18 months. Several attempts have failed to salvage its cargo, allegedly including bullion.
Because of the probability of wrecks around the islands, calls arose for the establishment of emergency depots for castaways in 1868. The New Zealand authorities established and maintained three such depots, at Port Ross, Norman Inlet and Carnley Harbour from 1887. They also cached additional supplies, including boats and 40 finger-posts, around the islands.
A further maritime tragedy occurred in 1907, with the loss of the and 12 of her crew, off Disappointment Island. The 15 survivors lived off the supplies in the Auckland Island depot.
In 2019, a helicopter with three people on board crashed into the ocean near Enderby Island, when they were en route to uplift an ill man on a fishing trawler. All three survived the crash, and were found the next day with only minor injuries. The rescue effort was led by Richard Hayes.
Scientific research and reserve
Three independent scientific expeditions visited the Auckland Islands in 1840. These included the United States Wilkes Expedition aboard the USS Porpoise, d'Urville's second voyage of the Astrolabe '', and the British Ross Expedition aboard the Erebus and Terror.The Sub-Antarctic Islands Scientific Expedition of 1907 by the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, New Zealand, aboard the ship Hinemoa, spent two weeks on the islands conducting a magnetic survey and taking botanical, zoological and geological specimens.
From 1941 to 1945, the islands hosted a New Zealand meteorological station as part of a World War II coastwatching programme staffed by scientist volunteers and known for security reasons as the "Cape Expedition".' Along with their other duties the Cape Expedition staff undertook biodiversity research and collected scientific specimens. The staff of the Cape Expedition included Robert Falla, later an eminent New Zealand scientist.' The 1972–1973 Auckland Islands Expedition spent several months studying the fauna and flora of the Auckland Islands.
the islands have no inhabitants, although scientists visit regularly and the authorities allow limited tourism on Enderby Island and Auckland Island.''
The marine environment surrounding the archipelago became a marine mammal sanctuary in 1993 and, unusually, also a marine reserve in 2003, measuring. The Subantarctic Islands marine reserves around the Auckland, Antipodes, Bounty and Campbell Islands combined form the largest natural sanctuary in New Zealand.