Inland Vindication Island features a rich vegetation, consisting of lichens and mosses, while various bird and penguin species breed along the coasts.

Vindication and Candlemas Island were both discovered on 2 February 1775 by James Cook on the HMS Resolution.

[3] The British HMS Protector landed a party on Vindication in 1956–1957 as part of a larger operation in the South Sandwich Islands,[4] with other visits from the same ship in 1962[5] and 1964.

[5] In May 1975, the Argentine research vessel ARA Islas Orcadas investigated seafloor communities in the channel between Vindication and Candlemas.

[7] In January 2011, the MS Golden Fleece sent a landing party ashore at Chinstrap Point.

[16] The entire coastline is made up by steep cliffs[15] that rise above bouldery beaches; the only exception is the valley where Pothole Gulch enters the sea.

[16] A subsidiary peak above Crosscut Point is Splinter Crag, which rises 175 metres (574 ft) above sea level.

[15] This asymmetric shape is due to erosion by weather and sea being concentrated on the western side of the island.

[18] The inland is formed by tablelands, ridges and creeks,[19] its surface covered with blocky debris from which lavas and pyroclastics emerge.

[14] The island is mostly ice-free[1] save for a shrinking area above 250 metres (820 ft)[20] around Quadrant Peak;[16] in 1964 ice covered about 0.3 square kilometres (0.12 sq mi).

The shape of the unnamed drainage implies that it once extended farther west, before coastal erosion truncated it.

[36] A submarine ridge at 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) depth connects the group to Visokoi farther north.

The subduction is responsible for the existence of the South Sandwich island arc, which is constituted by about eleven islands[39] in an eastward curving chain,[40] and submarine volcanoes such as Protector in the north and Adventure and Kemp in the south.

[44] The island is made up by layers of lava flows, scoria and tuff,[17] intruded by dykes.

[14] Coastal erosion has removed most of the volcanic pile,[45] so that only about one-fifth of the original volcano remains.

The penguins are concentrated on Chinstrap Point, where in 1964 60,000-100,000 breeding pairs were observed, while the seabirds nest in cliffs.