Current view: Text account
Site description (2015 baseline):
Site location and context
Île des Manchots and Empereur Island lie within two km of Cape Margerie, Terre Adélie. Port-Martin is an anchorage adjacent to Cape Margerie, from which the station established on the cape by the French Antarctic Expedition of 1949-50 takes its name. Port-Martin station was destroyed by fire in January 1952, was designated Historic Site & Monument No. 46 in 1985, and has since been designated as ASPA No. 166. The purpose of the protected area is conservation of the site's historic values, rather than the large colonies of birdlife present in the adjacent area.
The IBA qualifies on the basis of the Adélie Penguin (
Pygoscelis adeliae) colony present, and includes Mont du Sabbat and Mont du Sphinx on the eastern coast of Cape Margerie, Île des Manchots, Empereur Island and Pointe de Cézembre and the intervening marine area.
The closest permanent station is Dumont d'Urville (FRA), ~65 km to the west at Pointe Géologie.
Barbraud
et al. (1999) counted 20 171 breeding pairs of Adélie Penguin at Cape Margerie and Île des Manchots in 1997/98, although at this time none were breeding on Empereur Island (C. Barbraud pers. comm. 2015). More recently, approximately 35 000 breeding pairs (95% CI: 23 475, 62 350) of Adélie Penguin were present within the IBA area, as estimated from February 2011 satellite imagery (Lynch & LaRue 2014). The majority (~24 000 pairs) occupy Île des Manchots, with ~7100 pairs estimated on Empereur Island, ~3500 pairs on Cape Margerie, and ~250 pairs at Pointe de Cézembre (unpublished data H. Lynch & M. LaRue, pers. comm. 2014).
The Barbraud
et al. (1999) survey also recorded six pairs of South Polar Skuas (
Catharacta maccormicki) and confirmed the presence of breeding Wilson's Storm-petrels (
Oceanites oceanicus).
Non-bird biodiversity: None known.
Pressure/threats to key biodiversity
Three tourist visits to the Cape Margerie area have been reported in the ten years from 2004-14: all 48 people landed on a visit by
Spirit of Enderby in 2008/09, and in the same year visits were made by
Bremen (116 passengers) and
Orion (192 passengers) although landings were not made (IAATO Tourism Statistics, accessed: 18/12/2014).
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Important Bird Area factsheet: Île des Manchots / Empereur Island (Antarctica). Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/île-des-manchots--empereur-island-iba-antarctica on 26/12/2024.
