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
Major explorations after the Age of Discovery ice up to 1750 did so by being driven off their course and not of set purpose. An exception may perhaps be made in favor of Edmond Halley's voyage in HMS "Paramour" for magnetic investigations in the South Atlantic when he met the ice in 52° S in January 1700, but that latitude was his farthest south. A determined effort on the part of the French naval officer Pierre Bouvet to discover the South Land described by a half legendary sieur de Gonneyville resulted only in the discovery of Bouvet Island in 54°10′ S, and in the navigation of 48°