Deception Island

Deception Island is the flooded caldera of an active volcano, a ring of black ash slopes that ships enter through a narrow gap called Neptune's Bellows. Inside, at Whalers Bay, the rusting boilers and tanks of an old whaling station and the wreck of a British base stand half buried in ash and meltwater mud. Steam rises from the beach where the ground is warm, and many visitors take a polar plunge into the shallows. Telefon Bay shows the craters of the last eruptions. On the outer coast, Baily Head holds one of the largest chinstrap penguin colonies in Antarctica.