Discovery Bay is a

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

long and wide, indenting the north side of

Greenwich Island Greenwich Island (variant historical names ''Sartorius Island'', ''Berezina Island'') is an island long and from (average ) wide, lying between Robert Island and Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands. Surface area . The name Greenwic ...

, in the

South Shetland Islands The South Shetland Islands are a group of Antarctic islands with a total area of . They lie about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, and between southwest of the nearest point of the South Orkney Islands. By the Antarctic Treaty of 195 ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

. It had been known to

sealers Sealer may refer either to a person or ship engaged in seal hunting, or to a sealant; associated terms include: Seal hunting * Sealer Hill, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica * Sealers' Oven, bread oven of mud and stone built by sealers around 180 ...

in the area since about 1821. It was charted and named in 1935 by

Discovery Investigations The Discovery Investigations were a series of scientific cruises and shore-based investigations into the biology of whales in the Southern Ocean. They were funded by the British Colonial Office and organised by the Discovery Committee in London, wh ...

personnel on the ''

Discovery II ''Discovery II'', built in 1971, is the second of three Discovery sternwheel riverboats operated by the Riverboat Discovery company. ''Discovery II'' is still in use as a tour vessel on the Chena and Tanana rivers near Fairbanks, Alaska. Hist ...

''. The

Chilean Antarctic Expedition The First Chilean Antarctic Expedition (1947–1948) was an expedition to Antarctica mounted by the Chilean government and military to enforce its territorial claims against British challenges, namely Operation Tabarin. Among other accomplishmen ...

of 1947, under the command of Captain Federico Guesalaga Toro, decided to rename the name ''Bahía Chile'' as the site of Chile's first permanent Antarctic base, Base Soberanía, now Capitán Arturo Prat Base.

Antarctic Specially Protected Area

Two marine sites in the bay have collectively been designated

Antarctic Specially Protected Area An Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) is an area on the continent of Antarctica, or on nearby islands, which is protected by scientists and several different international bodies. The protected areas were established in 1961 under the Antarct ...

(ASPA) 144 (formerly SSSI 26), to protect the bay's

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

communities, which have relatively high species diversity and biomass and have been subject to a long-term research program.

Maps

* L.L. Ivanov
Antarctica: Livingston Island and Greenwich, Robert, Snow and Smith Islands.
Scale 1:120000 topographic map. Troyan: Manfred Wörner Foundation, 2009.

References

Bays of Greenwich Island Antarctic Specially Protected Areas {{GreenwichIsland-geo-stub