Kerguelen could see the side during his first voyage in February 1772, but could not land, and anchored at the South, in Baie du Lion-Marin, where he claimed the archipelago for France.
In his second voyage, in December 1773, he entered the harbour and named in Baie de l'Oiseau, after the frigate Oiseau, under Rosnovet, one of the ships of the expedition.
The flora is limited to moss and lichens in a tundra ecosystem, as well as a cane grass at the mouth of the spillway of Lake Rochegude.
However, his surgeon, William Anderson, had noted the existence of Pringlea at the Bay, a source of Vitamin C of interest at a time when scurvy was a common sanitary problem for sailors.
During the Ross expedition of 1840, Doctor McCormick, exploring Mount Havergal, found fossilised tree trunk, proving the existence of forests in a previous geological era.