Scientists urge protection of UK’s most remote islands

Environmentalists are calling for the UK’s South Sandwich Islands in the Antarctic Ocean to be classified as fully protected, as commercial pressures edge closer to the remote wildlife hotspot.

Great British Oceans, a coalition of national and international environmental groups including the Marine Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London, launched a campaign to secure the South Sandwich Islands as a marine sanctuary on 28 September.

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are some 4,000 kilometres north of Antarctica and 2,700 kilometres east of South America. While South Georgia is a focus of commercial fisheries for toothfish, icefish and krill, the other islands have largely been left unexploited so far, the coalition said.