The station is approximately 1700 km north of Dronning Maud Land and 2500 km southwest of South Africa. Norvegia lies some few meters above sea level, adjacent to the coast.
Research at the station
Norvegia (and previous bases at the Nyrøysa site) has served as the home base for Norway’s CEMP activities since the mid 1990s. CEMP Since the late 1990s, NPI has conducted monitoring of krill-predators on Bouvetøya to tell us about ecosystem form and function. This programme is a national obligation in service of CCAMLR (The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources). The island is in a region of the Southern Ocean which received very little fishing effort, making it an ideal location to characterise predator performance in the absence of fishing. Research expeditions have recently come into a three-year cycle of field effort. The flighted bird, penguin and fur seal CEMP monitoring also affords the opportunity for research programmes on the island, which currently include:
Logistics
The island lacks a quay or harbour, and people and equipment have to be transported by helicopter.
Facilites
The station provides sleeping and laboratory facilities suitable for small (6-person) field teams.
A remote weather station provides year-round data. The station is equipped with cameras and meteorological sensors which continually transmit data via satellite. It is self-sufficient as regards electricity, being supplied by wind and solar energy which operate the measuring equipment, also in the long periods when the station is unmanned.