Macquarie Island

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Macquarie Island is a subantarctic island in the south-western Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica. It has been governed as a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1880. It became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 1978 and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. Macquarie Island is an exposed portion of the Macquarie Ridge and is located where the Australian plate meets the Pacific plate. The island is home to the entire royal penguin population during their annual nesting season. Ecologically, the island is part of the Antipodes Subantarctic Islands tundra ecoregion.

Read on Wikipedia · Image NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey, Public domain