The rescue station began the continuous human presence on the island which continues today. The island was inhabited sporadically by sealers, shipwreck survivors, and salvagers known as "wreckers."Ī series of life-saving stations were established on Sable Island by the governor of Nova Scotia, John Wentworth, in 1801. A brief attempt at French colonization at the end of the 16th century using convicts failed. The expedition of Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes explored this region in 1520–1521 and they were among the first Europeans to encounter the island. The Sable Island Station, managed and staffed by Parks Canada, is the only permanently staffed facility on the island.Ĭontact the park office at +1 90 or email: In the winter, in-flight icing conditions will often delay or cancel flights. Spring and early summer are "fog season", while later in the autumn is hurricane season. Mid- to late August until the middle or end of September seems to provide the best rate of success for visits by air charter. The visitor season for Sable Island National Park Reserve is June to the end of October. The island is staffed year round by three federal government staff, rising during summer months when research projects and tourism increase. Sable Island is a 31.6-km² (12.2-sq mi) island 300 km (190 mi) southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and about 175 km (109 mi) southeast of the closest point of mainland Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean. Understand Sable Island from the northwest Full national park status has yet to be achieved, pending settlement of Indigenous Peoples’ land claims within the Made in Nova Scotia Process.Sable Island is an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, and a Canadian national park reserve. In 2013, Sable Island became protected as a National Park Reserve with the approval of Mi’kmaq stakeholders. Since then, research has expanded to include studies of climate, geomagnetism, and ecology. Sable Island map showing the location of the known wrecks upon the island.ĭespite challenges of navigating to and from Sable Island, a rich history of research began there in 1871 with establishment of the Meteorological Service of Canada. Most of their remains have been crushed by waves and buried in the sand, making a full census impossible. Some 350 ships have succumbed to the sand bars, thick fog, and difficult currents characteristic of the area. Over the last several centuries, Sable Island has also been notorious for attracting shipwrecks. That origin story may also help to explain the unexpected stability of some of the island’s dune structures. It likely formed from a terminal moraine - a mass of rocks and sediment carried down and deposited by a glacier, - sometime during the last Ice Age. For starters, it looks like a barrier island but is located much further from the coastline than typical barrier islands. Looking closer, Sable Island yields quirks far better than any tricky mapmaker could. It is a place of sand, wind, waves, a single Scots pine (the only survivor of more than 80,000 trees planted since 1900), and feral horses, among other things. There are precedents for such behavior on land after all: Ever heard of a “trap street”?īut a quick internet search confirms that Sable Island does exist. It is tempting to imagine that the island’s unusually graceful outline might indicate the presence of a clever cartographer - one who has inserted a fictitious landmass in the Atlantic to suss out copycat mapmakers. So it’s hard not to wonder about its position on the map, and its presence in the physical world. Really? Can we be sure about this? The island is an anomaly, way out in the Atlantic, and there is nothing nearby that seems to justify its existence, geologically speaking. Sable Island pictured in an atlas in isolation. About 175 km southeast of Nova Scotia, a seam appears on the surface of the ocean and opens up, ever-so-slightly, into a wry smile.Īn adjacent label should offer a name: Sable Island. When you next find yourself moving your eyes or navigating a finger across a map of the Northwest Atlantic, you may be in for a surprise.
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