Weddell Sea

Weddell Sea, large embayment of the Antarctic coastline that forms a deep southward extension of the Southern Ocean. Centering at about 73° S 45° W, the Weddell Sea is bounded on the west by the Antarctic Peninsula of West Antarctica, on the east by Coats Land of East Antarctica, and on the extreme south by frontal barriers of the Filchner and Ronne ice shelves. It has an area of about 1,080,000 square miles (2,800,000 square km).

The Weddell Sea is usually heavily iced, the pack generally extending north to about 60° S in the western and central sectors in early summer, a factor that severely hindered early ship exploration. On February 23, 1820, the British brig Williams, on one of the first attempts at penetration, was stopped by ice off the coast of northeastern Graham Land. In the same year, pack ice stopped the Russian ship Vostok just south of the South Sandwich Islands. On February 20, 1823, a British explorer and sealer, James Weddell, on the brig Jane, found an unusually open route southeastward from the South Orkney Islands and reached a farthest south position of 74°15′ S 34°17′ W. The name bestowed by Weddell, George IV Sea, was abandoned when, in 1900, it was proposed that the sea be named for its discoverer.

Few attempts to penetrate the pack’s fringes followed, until 1903 and 1904 when William S. Bruce in the ship Scotia, of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902–04), undertook the first oceanographic exploration of the Weddell Sea. Luitpold Coast of western Coats Land was charted by the Deutschland on the German South Polar Expedition of 1910–12 under Wilhelm Filchner, and the ice shelf was seen that now bears his name. While attempting to leave a party off for a first crossing of Antarctica, the Endurance of the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914–17) under Ernest Shackleton was trapped in pack ice off Luitpold Coast on January 18, 1915, and eventually crushed. Although the ship was destroyed, its entire crew escaped, to be later rescued from Elephant Island. During 1956–58 a number of bases for the International Geophysical Year were established along the southern and southeastern coast.

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Severe weather and icing conditions have restricted oceanographic exploration of this region. Modern icebreakers and floating ice stations now support increasing exploration of the region.

The generally narrow Antarctic continental shelf widens to more than 150 miles (240 km) along the Antarctic Peninsula and up to about 300 miles (480 km) along the southern edge of the Weddell Sea. Marking the edge of the continent, the break between shelf and continental slope lies at a depth of about 1,600 feet (500 meters). This unusually great depth for a continental margin may have resulted from the tremendous ice load imposed on the Antarctic crust. The Luitpold Coast–Coats Land shelf is much narrower, its floor dropping sharply off into a deep channel that extends southwestward to and beneath the Filchner Ice Shelf and probably onward to a deep glacier-filled valley along the west side of the Pensacola Mountains.

Since the Weddell Sea is well within the Antarctic climatic zone, its fauna is that typical of other Antarctic regions—penguins, Weddell seals, petrels, and the like. Much of the cold oceanic bottom waters of the world are of Antarctic origin, and most of these are produced in the depths of the Weddell Sea. Surface water currents move generally clockwise around the sea, southwestward along Coats Land and thence northward along the Antarctic Peninsula, eventually to meet the prevailing West Wind Drift.