The island is staffed year-round by three Parks Canada staff, rising during summer months when research projects and tourism increase.

It is also possible that Fagundes sighted the island while heading southwest, reaching the Bay of Fundy, as the 1558 map of Diogo Homem and later Samuel de Champlain suggested, but this is unclear.

Thick fogs, treacherous currents, and the island's location in the middle of a major transatlantic shipping route and rich fishing grounds account for the large number of wrecks.

[19] After the 1991 Perfect Storm, the commercial fishing vessel Andrea Gail's emergency position-indicating radiobeacon (EPIRB) was discovered on the shore of Sable Island on November 6, 1991, nine days after the last transmission from the crew.

No further wrecks occurred until 1999, when the three crew members of the yacht Merrimac survived after their sloop ran aground due to a navigational error.

[24] The station's rescue equipment was upgraded in 1854 with the latest generation of self-bailing lifeboats and life cars through the fundraising efforts of social reformer Dorothea Dix who had visited the island in the previous year.

The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) first automated in the 1960s and eventually decommissioned the West light station in 2004 leaving only the East lighthouse active.

For this reason it is considered a separate amateur radio "entity" (equivalent to a country for award credit), and with visiting operations using the special call sign prefix CY0.

When the Sable Offshore Energy Project was active, the island was designated as an emergency evacuation point for crews aboard nearby drilling rigs.

[36] The establishment of the park reserve means that the island, and the surrounding area within 1 nautical mile (1.9 km; 1.2 mi), cannot be drilled for oil or natural gas.

[39] The imagery was collected in September 2015 by a Parks Canada employee who carried a backpack version of the Street View car camera around an area on the centre of the island, part of Google's Trekker program which explores off-road scenic locations.

[41] The long crescent-shaped island rises gently from the shallows of the continental shelf approximately 285 km (177 mi) east of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Its location, in tandem with the area's frequent fog and sudden strong storms (such as hurricanes and nor'easters), have resulted in over 350 recorded shipwrecks.

It is often referred to as the Graveyard of the Atlantic,[42] as it sits astride the great circle route from North America's east coast to Europe.

[53] In the early 1800s, many of the horses were used by men patrolling the island, searching for ships in distress, and the animals also moved lifeboats and equipment to sites of shipwrecks.

[51] This was partly motivated by a plan in the 1950s, eventually aborted due to public pressure, to remove the horses from the island, after some biologists reported that they were damaging the ecology of the land.

[54] Nonetheless, some continued to view the horses as an invasive species which is not suitable in a protected region where ecological integrity should be preserved according to the National Parks Act.

The Meteorological Service of Canada operated a wide range of manual and automated instruments, including the Automated Weather Observing System, an aerology program measuring conditions in the upper atmosphere using a radiosonde carried aloft by a hydrogen-filled weather balloon to altitudes beyond 40 km (25 mi), and a program collecting data on background levels of carbon dioxide, which began there in 1974.

The data it collects aid scientific research into rates of change of the Earth's magnetic field and increase the accuracy of the BGS Global Geomagnetic Model.

There is no permanent runway for fixed wing aircraft, which land instead on the south beach in an area designated as the Sable Island Aerodrome (CSB2).

The unique landscape, history of shipwrecks, and wildlife, especially horses, have made Sable Island an iconic place in Atlantic Canada and attracted considerable international following.

Frank Parker Day's 1928 novel Rockbound features a vivid depiction of the sinking of the schooner Sylvia Mosher during the 1926 Nova Scotia hurricane at Sable Island.

[69] One of the island's most notable temporary residents was Nova Scotian author Thomas Head Raddall, whose early experiences working at the wireless post there served as the inspiration for his 1950 novel The Nymph and the Lamp.

Among the first was Arthur Williams McCurdy who photographed the island, its horses and shipwrecks in 1898 for National Geographic during a visit with Alexander Graham Bell.

The first line of the Buck 65 song "Blood of a Young Wolf" is "Ten thousand horses, Sable Island, endless summer."

The island has been the subject of many Canadian documentaries by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board of Canada, beginning with the 1956 NFB film Sable Island by Allan Wargon, the 2003 NFB documentary Moving Sands by Phillipe Baylaucq,[73] and more recently, an episode of Land and Sea.

[76] A number of international documentaries have also explored the island, including the 2007 film Île de sable made by Jean-François Ducrocq and Malek Sahraoui for France 3, French public television.

Another permanent exhibit about Sable Island, exploring its ecology and the on-island researchers' work, is found at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History.

[20] On September 11, 2014, Don Connolly of CBC Radio's Information Morning broadcast part of the daily current affairs program from Sable Island.

As a result, a number of private expeditions (known as DX-peditions) to operate temporary radio stations on Sable Island have been mounted.