Eights Coast

Eights Coast is that portion of the coast of West Antarctica between Cape Waite and Pfrogner Point. To the west is the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land, and to the east is Bryan Coast. It is part of Ellsworth Land and stretches between 103°24'W and 89°35'W. This coast is bordered by Thurston Island, Abbot Ice Shelf and some islands within the ice shelf, and for most of its length washed by Bellingshausen Sea, and west of Thurston Island by Amundsen Sea. Most of Eights Coast is not claimed by any nation, like Marie Byrd Land, the large region west of it. Only in the east, Eights Coast touches the sector claimed by Chile as part of its southernmost province. Peter I Island, 450 km north of the coast, is claimed by Norway as a dependency.

The coast was sighted by members of the US Antarctic Service in flights from the USS Bear in February 1940. It was mapped in detail by the United States Geological Survey from surveys and from U.S. Navy air photos, 1960–66. Eights Coast was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for James Eights of Albany, New York, a geologist on the Annawan in 1830, who carried on geological investigations in the South Shetland Islands, and who cruised westward on the Annawan, in company with the Penguin, to 103°W. Eights, the earliest American scientist in the Antarctic, discovered the first known fossils in the Antarctic region, a tree section in the South Shetland Islands. As a result of these investigations Eights, in 1833, published in the Transactions of the Albany Institute (Vol. 2) what proved to be remarkably accurate observations and conclusions on the natural phenomena of the region.

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