Name details

Whales, Bay of

New Zealand Gazetteer Id 114712

Feature type: None recorded.

Origin

This name originates from New Zealand. It is part of the New Zealand Gazetteer and the SCAR Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica.

Names that other countries have for this feature:

• Whales, Bay of (Russia)
• Whales, Bay of (United States of America)

Narrative

An iceport indenting the front of Ross Ice Shelf just northward of Roosevelt Island. A natural ice harbor which generally forms here, it served as the base site for Amundsen's successful dash to the South Pole, 1911, the Byrd Antarctic Expeditions of 1928-30 and 1933-35, and for the West Base of U.S. Antarctic Service, 1939-41. The configuration of the iceport is continuously changing. A survey by the Byrd expedition in 1934 determined that the feature lay at the junction of two separate ice systems, the movements of which are influenced by the presence of Roosevelt Island. Cdr. Glen Jacobsen, USN, who visited in the Atka in January 1955, found that calving of the ice shelf rendered the iceport temporarily unusable. The feature was so named by Ernest Shackleton in the Nimrod, January 24, 1908, because of the large number of whales seen in it. (SCAR CGA narrative, USA)

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