Ryder Bay
Ryder Bay is a broad bay on the south-east coast of Adelaide Island, in the British Antarctic Territory, extending west of Rothera Point and north of the Léonie Islands.
The bay is seven miles wide at its mouth and is indented four miles into the coast.[1] It lies five and a half miles east of Mount Gaudry.
The bay and its islands were discovered and first surveyed in 1909 by the French Antarctic Expedition of 1908-1910 under Jean-Baptiste Charcot. They were surveyed in 1936 by the British Graham Land Expedition under John Rymill, and were resurveyed by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey from Stonington Island in October 1948. While Charcot named the island groups he found the bay itself is named for after Major Lisle Charles Dudley Ryder (1902-40), of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, who served as Second Mate and shipwright in the British Graham Land Expedition ship Penola, commanded by his brother Lieutenant R.E.D. Ryder. (Lieutenant Ryder has the Ryder Glacier in Palmer Land named after him.) Major Ryder was killed in action. In France on 27 May 1940.
The bay and its islands
Across the mouth of the bay are the Léonie Islands, a group of small islands, of which the largest and westernmost, Léonie Island, is over a mile across with a height of about 1,600 feet and a permanent icecap. Rothera Point and most of the islands in the bay have patches of persistent snow, but are rocky, with irregular coastlines that include beaches, steep cliffs and scattered rocks and boulders, providing ice-free ground and crevices for nesting seabirds. There are several freshwater ponds, meltwater channels and small streams. The sparse vegetation is dominated by lichens and mosses.[1]
Birdlife and conservation
The 'Ryder Bay Islands Important Bird Area', extending over 1,285 acres, is a site which has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it supports significant numbers of breeding seabirds, notably south polar skuas. The site encompasses the Léonie Islands lying at the mouth of Ryder Bay, as well as Rothera Point, on Adelaide Island, and which is the eastern headland of the bay.[1]
The bay's eastern headland, Rothera Point, is protected as Antarctic Specially Protected Area No.129 so that it could serve as a biological research site and control area against which the environmental impact of the adjacent Rothera Research Station could be monitored in an Antarctic fellfield ecosystem.[2]
In 2018, it was determined that Rothera Point and the islands in Ryder Bay held 978 colonies of south polar skuas. Other birds reported as breeding in the designated area include Antarctic shags, Wilson's storm petrels, Antarctic terns and kelp gulls. Southern elephant seals, Antarctic fur seals, Weddell seals and crabeater seals haul out on land or adjacent floating ice at the point and the islands in the summer.[1]
Location
- Location map: 67°33’58"S, 68°19’59"W
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Ryder Bay Islands IBA: BirdLife International
- ↑ "Rothera Point, Adelaide Island". Management Plan for Antarctic Specially Protected Area No. 129: Measure 1, Annex B. Antarctic Treaty Secretariat. 2007. http://www.ats.aq/documents/recatt/Att356_e.pdf.
- Gazetteer and Map of The British Antarctic Territory: Ryder Bay