Jordan Cove () is a small

cove A cove is a small type of bay or coastal inlet. Coves usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creeks, or recesses in a coast are o ...

which is the principal indentation in the south side of Bird Island, off the west end of South Georgia, near

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 cont ...

. It was surveyed by the

South Georgia Survey The South Georgia Survey was a series of expeditions to survey and map the island of South Georgia, led by Duncan Carse between 1951 and 1957. Although South Georgia had been commercially exploited as a whaling station during the first half of ...

in the period of 1951–57. The

UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee The UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee (or UK-APC) is a United Kingdom government committee, part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, responsible for recommending names of geographical locations within the British Antarctic Territory (BAT) and ...

(UKAPC) named the cove for David Starr Jordan, an American naturalist and the first president of Stanford University from 1891 to 1913. From 1896–97 Jordan was commissioner in charge of fur seal investigations in the

North Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, and subsequently, a powerful advocate of fur seal protection by international agreement. Fur seals breed on Bird Island, particularly in the vicinity of this cove. The western arm of Jordan Cove is called Main Bay. UKAPC has found that this descriptive name has been in local use at least since 1957. Barracouta Rock lies submerged south of the entrance to Jordan Cove. It was first charted by personnel on HMS ''Owen'' in 1961, and named by the UKAPC for one of Owen's survey motor boats.

References

Coves of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands {{SouthGeorgia-geo-stub