On 4 March 1663, a Dutchman named Barent Barentszoon Ham was the first person to discover the islands - he called the northerly island Dina, and the southerly Maerseveen. However, he gave the wrong latitude, and no one else could find the islands - the findings were all forgotten. On 13 January 1772, Frenchman Marc Mace Marion du Fresne rediscovered them. On 12 December 1776, James Cook saw the islands, noticing that the chart gave them no name - he called them the Prince Edward Islands. He gave the name Marion and Crozet Islands to the islands that Marion du Fresne had found later on his voyage. On 29 December 1947, a secret South African naval expedition raised the South African flag at Marion Island on 4 January 1948. The Prince Edward Islands now belong to South Africa and are 316 sq km in size (Marion is 290 sq km, making in larger than Prince Edward Island). The highest point of both the islands is on Marion: the State President Swart Peak (1230 m). The weather is unfortunately almost always bad - there are low temperatures throughout the year, a lot of snow and rain, strong winds, and the sky is usually at least three-quarters covered by clouds. On Prince Edward Island, scientific research is severely restricted. No more than four people are allowed to land there once every three to five years - even these people are not allowed to stay more than two or three days. Introduced species have badly damaged some of the other life on the islands. Mice have damaged plant and insect life, but descendants of the five house cats brought to control rodents have done the most damage. The five cats had multiplied to about 3400, which were destroying the local bird population. Measures were taken, and the cats have now been exterminated. Fur and elephant seals breed on the Prince Edward Islands, as do hundreds of thousands of penguins (kings, gentoos, rockhoppers, and macaronis), hundreds of thousands of petrels, and thousands of albatrosses.

Geographic Location