Jan Mayen

Guine­abuk­ta is sit­u­at­ed on the south­ern­most part of the north coast of Jan Mayen. The name is going back into the 17th cen­tu­ry, the ori­gin is not clear. This bay is wide and very open. In con­trast to Titelt­buk­ta and Sjuhol­len­dar­buk­ta, there is no sand beach in Guine­abuk­ta. The shore­line con­sists of stones and coarse grav­el with large amounts of drift­wood, it is com­plete­ly unshel­tered from the sea. Accord­ing­ly, there is no known use of Guine­abuk­ta in his­tor­i­cal times worth men­tion­ing, for exam­ple by whalers or trappers.

The den­si­ty of breed­ing birds is, how­ev­er, strik­ing. Espe­cial­ly eider ducks, oth­er­wise not a species gen­er­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jan Mayen, are there in sur­pris­ing num­bers. They are swim­ming on the lit­tle lagoon near the shore and breed­ing hid­den between rocks in the lava fields which dom­i­nate the ter­rain every­where around Guine­abuk­ta. So should you ever hap­pen to hike in that area in the ear­ly sum­mer (high­ly unlike­ly unless you are a sta­tion mem­ber or doing sci­en­tif­ic field­work), keep a dis­tance from the shore to avoid much dis­tur­bance to breed­ing birds.

Detail: Guine­abuk­ta

The dense moss car­pets and colour­ful lichens are very impressive.

Photo gallery Guineabukta

← Back