Deception Island is an island in the South Shetland Islands archipelago, with one of the safest harbours in Antarctica. This island is the caldera of an active volcano, which seriously damaged local scientific stations in 1967 and 1969. The island previously held a whaling station; it is now a tourist destination and scientific outpost, administered under the Antarctic Treaty System.
The island was first visited and explored by the American sealer Nathaniel Palmer. Palmer named it “Deception Island” on account of its outward deceptive appearance as a normal island, when the narrow entrance of Neptune’s Bellows revealed it rather to be a ring around a flooded caldera.
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