The group includes three main islands: Young, Buckle and Sturge, which lie in a line from northwest to southeast, and several smaller islets and rocks: The islands are claimed by New Zealand as part of the Ross Dependency (see Territorial claims in Antarctica).

The English sealing captains John Balleny and Thomas Freeman first sighted the group in 1839.

Freeman was the first person known to land on any of the islands on 9 February 1839, and this was the first recorded human landfall south of the Antarctic Circle.

[4] In February 2015 the islands were visited for three days by the New Zealand-Australia Antarctic Ecosystems Voyage under the auspices of the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research aboard the vessel RV Tangaroa, with the objective of studying marine life ecosystems of the islands, especially with reference to the humpback whale.

[8] Other earthquakes occur near the Southeast Indian Ridge and Balleny fracture zone, including a magnitude 8.1 earthquake in 1998 that struck just over 700 km (430 mi) west-northwest of the islands[9] which changed the pattern of seismicity in a wide area around the islands.