In February 2026 the SWOSan international team of 93 science professionals, embarked on the icebreaker Polarstern from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) toward the northwest Weddell Sea with a mission: study what the flow of water and ice was like in the Larsen Ice Shelf to determine its influence on the planet’s ocean circulation. Neither more nor less. However, a strong storm forced them to seek shelter, changing the course of the expedition. What they found when they turned aside was an island of solid rock that did not appear on the maps.
There is a new island on the map. The island is in the northwest of the Weddell Sea, in the vicinity of Joinville Island, near the Danger Isletsan area that fulfills what its name promises: it has dense ice, part of which is hidden beneath the surface, and the navigation conditions are extreme. Its dimensions are approximately 130 meters long, 50 meters wide and it rises 16 meters above sea level, more or less like the Polarstern, whose length measures 118 meters.
Despite being a full-fledged island, the island had no name or coordinates nor did it appear in international cartographic databases in the area, vaguely defined as “a danger zone for navigation”, as explains Simon Dreutterfrom the AWI Bathymetry section. The few charts that hinted at its existence did not even locate it well (deviation of one nautical mile, about 1.85 kilometers). Although it doesn’t have a name yet at the SCARYes, we know how to place it on the map.
Why is it important. From a geological point of view, this finding shows that although we are immersed in space exploration, there are still corners of our planet to discover. World cartography is incomplete and the Wedell Sea is precisely one of the territories with the most candidates to harbor surprises: it has difficult access and little data coverage, in addition to the interpolation systems that generate bathymetric maps such as the IBCSO can literally erase unregistered objects physically, as the entity itself warns. Simply put, the island may have remained invisible for decades simply because no ship had boarded it with the right tools.
Its discovery is also a reflection of the retreat of sea ice in the region since 2017, attributed to warming surface waters. The retreat of the ice has made a previously impenetrable area navigable, which raises the question: was the island always there or has it emerged recently? From a biological point of view, it is a virgin laboratory: its flora and fauna are completely unknown, which constitutes a magnificent opportunity to understand adaptation to that environment.
Context. The Weddell Sea is a key piece of global ocean circulation. That is where the Antarctic bottom waterone of the densest and coldest masses of water on the planet. This mass of water feeds the bottom currents of all oceans and regulates the exchange of heat and carbon on a planetary scale, as documented in oceanographic literature. Altering its dynamics, as is happening due to the retreat of the Larsen Ice Shelf, has consequences that spread thousands of kilometers.
The SWOS expedition was designed precisely to quantify these changes and so far what they have discovered is how much the thickness of the ice varies: up to four meters on the western continental shelf, where the tides compress and deform the ice, and just five feet to the east, where it comes from the Ronne and Filchner ice sheets, which are subject to less pressure.
Antarctic bottom water is formed in the Antarctic Ocean as a result of the cooling of surface water in polynyas.Wikipedia
How they discovered it. That storm that forced the Polastern to seek refuge in the shelter of Joinville Island. It was then that Simon Dreutter detected an anomaly in the charts and went up to the bridge. There he saw what looked like an unusually dirty iceberg. Like it was a rock. Approaching with caution, always keeping at least 50 meters of water under the keel to minimize the risk of hitting ice, the team confirmed that it was an island. The ship surrounded it at a distance of about 150 meters and took the opportunity to map both its seabed (with a multibeam echo sounder) and its orography using a drone. They already had the first elevation model of the island.
What’s going to happen now. Once the official naming process is complete, the team will publish the coordinates of the island and all that information will be incorporated into the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean and international nautical charts, so that its existence will no longer surprise anyone again. As a curiosity, due to maritime tradition, whoever discovers such a geographical feature has the privilege of proposing the name in a process that can last months. Beyond the name, the island opens up a new scientific range: rock samples will determine its lithological composition and age and biological studies will help understand how Antarctic ecosystems respond to climate change.
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