A report on Southern Ocean and Weddell Sea

James Weddell (24 August 1787 – 9 September 1834) was a British sailor, navigator and seal hunter who in February 1823 sailed to latitude of 74° 15′ S—a record 7.69 degrees or 532 statute miles south of the Antarctic Circle—and into a region of the Southern Ocean that later became known as the Weddell Sea.

The Antarctic Peninsula is part of the larger peninsula of West Antarctica, protruding 1300 km from a line between Cape Adams (Weddell Sea) and a point on the mainland south of the Eklund Islands.

Seabirds of the Southern Ocean and West Antarctica found on the peninsula include: southern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialoides), the scavenging southern giant petrel (Macronectes giganteus), Cape petrel (Daption capense), snow petrel (Pagodroma nivea), the small Wilson's storm-petrel (Oceanites oceanicus), imperial shag (Phalacrocorax atriceps), snowy sheathbill (Chionis alba), the large south polar skua (Catharacta maccormicki), brown skua (Catharacta lönnbergi), kelp gull (Larus dominicanus), and Antarctic tern (Sterna vittata).

The Weddell seal was discovered and named in the 1820s during expeditions led by British sealing captain James Weddell to the area of the Southern Ocean now known as the Weddell Sea.

Elephant Island is an ice-covered, mountainous island off the coast of Antarctica in the outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands, in the Southern Ocean.

The island was the desolate refuge of the British explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew in 1916 following the loss of their ship Endurance in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea.

King Haakon VII Sea (King Haakon VII Hav) is a proposed name for part of the Southern Ocean on the coast of East Antarctica.

By a narrow proposed definition, this sea would be between the Weddell Sea and a proposed Lazarev Sea name, and thus stretch only along Princess Martha Coast from Cape Norvegia at 12°18′W, the easternmost point of the Weddell Sea, to Fimbul Ice Shelf close to the Prime Meridian at 0°0′, which is proposed as the western border of Lazarev Sea.

The Weddell Gyre is one of the two gyres that exist within the Southern Ocean.

The gyre is located in the Weddell Sea, and rotates clockwise.

While the bulk of it upwells in the Southern Ocean, the oldest waters (with a transit time of about 1000 years) upwell in the North Pacific.

AABW formed in the Weddell Sea will mainly fill the Atlantic and Indian Basins, whereas the AABW formed in the Ross Sea will flow towards the Pacific Ocean.