Also, it’s Antarctica. Observation at the poles is patchy compared to elsewhere on Earth. Low satellite coverage, illumination issues, lack of incentives, etc. - and that’s just satellite and aerial ops, never mind boots on the ground.
I was in the Antarctic about a decade ago, and this was underscored for me when we went to visit an island which has had maybe 20 humans visit, total - only to find it wasn’t where any of the charts said it was - it was about 3 miles away.
Fortunately we could just see it, as we had fine weather - which, upon further reading, neither of the previous surveys could, which explains the error - they had gone by dead reckoning in the era before GPS.
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Also, it’s Antarctica. Observation at the poles is patchy compared to elsewhere on Earth. Low satellite coverage, illumination issues, lack of incentives, etc. - and that’s just satellite and aerial ops, never mind boots on the ground.
I was in the Antarctic about a decade ago, and this was underscored for me when we went to visit an island which has had maybe 20 humans visit, total - only to find it wasn’t where any of the charts said it was - it was about 3 miles away.
Fortunately we could just see it, as we had fine weather - which, upon further reading, neither of the previous surveys could, which explains the error - they had gone by dead reckoning in the era before GPS.