Bouvet Island 247 years after its discovery. The Norwegian Polar Institute established a research station, made of shipping containers, at Nyrøysa in 1996. On 23 February 2006, the island experienced a magnitude 6.2 earthquake whose epicentre was about away, weakening the station's foundation and causing it to be blown to sea during a winter storm. In 2014, a new research station was sent from Tromsø in Norway, via Cape Town, to Bouvet. The new station is designed to house six people for periods of two to four months. In the mid-1980s, Bouvetøya, Jan Mayen, and Svalbard were considered as locations for the
Bouvet Island eared seal was protected on and around the island in 1929 and in 1935 all seals around the island were protected. In 1955, the South African frigate "Transvaal" visited the island. Nyrøysa, a rock-strewn ice-free area, the largest such on Bouvet, was created sometime between 1955 and 1958, probably by a landslide. In 1964 the island was visited by the British naval ship HMS "Protector". On 17 December 1971, the entire island and its territorial waters were protected as a nature reserve. A scientific landing was made in 1978, during which the underground temperature was measured to be . In