The sub-Antarctic islands that encircle the continent are tiny in area, yet have proved fascinating for scientists from the days of the Challenger expedition onwards. Each one is different in its geology and age and, although all are species poor, the similarities and differences in their floras and faunas provide test cases for hypotheses on colonisation, speciation, competition, and the potential to understand and quantify land-sea interactions.
The Prince Edward Islands were ceded to South Africa by the UK and formally annexed by a party from HMSAS Transvaal in 1947. The South African government established a meteorological station in 1948, but there was little immediate enthusiasm for science until E.M. van Zinderen Baaker, a palaeoecologist with good political connections, raised government interest in establishing some basic data on geology, biology, and climatology. The resulting book (van Zinderen Baaker and others Reference Van Zinderen Baaker, Winterbottom and Dyer1971) proved the key to unlocking a continuous scientific presence there, leading in due course to the designation of the island as a national nature reserve. This new multi-authored volume synthesises the scientific progress on both land and the surrounding sea since van Zinderen Baaker's pioneering expedition, providing a new benchmark for sub-Antarctic science and establishing clearly the value of these islands for investigations of questions of global importance.
Marion Island has clearly attracted a number of very able South African scientists (as well as some key international visitors), and seems to have exerted a remarkable hold on them throughout their research careers. The chapter authors are without doubt the foremost authorities on the islands and have provided us with a fitting successor to the van Zinderen Baaker volume, with a direct link back to it in the foreword by Brian Huntley, the plant ecologist on that early expedition.
The structure of the volume is interesting, with the first four chapters setting the scene in a global context, providing a summary of the oceanography, climate, and geology and geomorphology. The remaining nine chapters are on oceanography and marine biogeochemistry, pelagic predators, primary production on land, vegetation dynamics, spatial variation in the terrestrial system, biogeography, conservation and management, human history, and a final synthesis chapter. Each chapter provides an excellent overview of the relevant field, often organised to deliberately juxtapose groups usually dealt with separately (like seals and birds in a single chapter). Every chapter has a section dealing with climate change, emphasising the importance of this phenomenon in understanding a particular aspect of the biology of the island.
Chapter 10 on spatial variation is really a case study on Azorella selago, a keystone species in the Marion flora and an excellent basis for studying changes at a variety of scales from a single clump to the whole island landscape. I believe the approach by McGeoch and others has considerable merit and could be used successfully on other islands with other key species.
Perhaps the most unusual chapters are those dealing with conservation and human history. In describing the progress from commercial exploitation of seals in the early nineteenth century to the present national nature reserve (which is also being considered as a world heritage site), De Villiers and Cooper provide one of the most detailed accounts I have seen of the legal protection afforded to a sub-Antarctic island and the way in which major conservation concerns were identified and tackled. Alien species (both plant and animal) have been a major concern for a considerable time, and their account provides a great deal of new information. Their chapter also deals with disease and quarantine, ethics for animal research, and the practical management of impacts on the islands. This chapter links very closely to Cooper's history of humans where his inimitable style (‘Seal tongues for breakfast and seal skins for shoes’) makes it one of the most readable chapters in the volume. Whilst John Marsh's book (Reference Marsh1948) provided a useful account of some of the early history, Cooper not only adds to that but also provides the post-annexation history and shows just how much more there is to write in this field, from the problems with race, gender, and servants in staffing the station through to the ‘nuclear flash’ recorded from nearby in the Southern Ocean.
Chown and Froneman contribute the final chapter on change in terrestrial and marine systems. In most cases these authors are forced to speculate on what might happen, as there are few experimental data available on which to base a model and yet this is now the best researched sub-Antarctic island. What enormous potential exists on the other sub-Antarctic islands, the terrestrial ecosystems of which are at present hardly being researched at all! Sadly, this seems unlikely to change on South Georgia and Macquarie Island under the present governance regimes.
Apart from these individual chapters there are 12 appendices providing up-to-date lists of species for many groups — diatoms, hepatics, mosses, phanerogams, lichens, invertebrates, plankton, benthos, fish, birds, and mammals. Since these also include all the known non-native species, the lists demonstrate very clearly the remarkably undamaged nature of Prince Edward Island, surely the largest sub-Antarctic island still remaining in almost pristine condition. What they also demonstrate is the areas lacking detailed research. Whilst we have lists of benthos collected, there are no data on community structures or species frequency, the list of fish is not linked in any way to fishing or to abundance around the islands, there has been little research on the freshwater bodies, and, although we have excellent lists of mosses, hepatics, and lichens, the botanical research has concentrated on the flowering plants.
The book is very well produced by South African publishers, with a high standard of copy-editing and printed on heavy weight paper. It deserves an international audience, which national publishers often find hard to reach, and indeed you cannot buy it through Amazon, only direct from the publishers web site (www.sun-e-shop.co.za). At 300 Rand it is very good value indeed. The plates, many of which are in colour, are gathered at the end. I was surprised not to find a Google Earth view of the island to illustrate photographically the ‘down-stream’ effect on the eastern sides of the islands and the localised effects of cloud generation.
This is a scientific monograph and so not likely to appeal to the general public, but it does provide an excellent basis for someone to write a popular natural history, as was recently published for Gough Island (Hänel and others Reference Hänel, Chown and Gaston2005). There have been books on the other sub-Antarctic islands, but the only one that bears any comparison with the present volume is Selkirk and others (Reference Selkirk, Seppelt and Selkirk1990) on Macquarie Island, again a volume that provided an important synthesis of all available scientific data. Looking at bibliographic listings for South Georgia, Crozet, and Kerguelen, it is clear that all would benefit greatly from such a treatment, but there seems to be a lack of enthusiastic volunteers willing to undertake the considerable work necessary. Perhaps this excellent volume will stimulate some French and British scientists to bring their islands up to this remarkable standard of synthesis.
