Sable Island Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Sable Island is situated 180 km southeast of Nova Scotia, Canada in the Atlantic Ocean. The island is a crescent-shaped sandbar emerging from the vast shoals and shallows which have caused over 300 recorded shipwrecks. Almost 2 km at its widest point, it is about 38 km long and is covered with grass and other low-growing vegetation. Sable means "sand" in French.
It is home to over 250 wild horses who are protected by law from human interference. Several large bird colonies are here, Arctic terns, and Ipswich sparrows who breed nowhere else.
Beginning over 200 years ago, lighthouse and life-saving crews and their animals have inhabited the island. A brief attempt at colonization at the end of the 16th century by the French failed. Meteorological and atmospheric studies are routinely conducted on Sable because of its unique geographic position down-wind from the mainland.
Sable Island is mentioned in the book and a staged version appears in the movie The Perfect Storm. The island is specifically mentioned in the Constitution of Canada as being the responsibility of the federal government. It was under the administrative control of the Canadian Coast Guard like Saint Paul Island, but government privatization initiatives in 1999 created the Sable Island Preservation Trust to manage the island, and come up with the $1-million per year required to run the island. The island is presently in danger of not receiving the required funding to operate, and therefore is in danger of tourists accidentally contaminating the ecosystem in 2005 when the funding may run out.
As a result of this separate administration, amateur radio operators consider it a separate country, having the call sign prefix CY9. Since many amateurs want to collect contacts with as many countries as possible, and the island is virtually uninhabited, this makes stations operating from Sable Island very desirable to contact ("rare DX"). As a result, a number of private expeditions to operate temporary radio stations (known as DX-peditions) have been mounted.
The island is considered a part of the Halifax Regional Municipality and the federal electoral district of Halifax, although Halifax proper is some 180 km away on the Nova Scotian mainland.
| Mercator projection: public domain Online Map Creation |
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