It was first mapped from air photos taken by U.S. Navy Operation Highjump, 1946–47, and was included in a survey of the Swain Islands in 1957 by Wilkes Station personnel under Carl R. Eklund.

It was named by Eklund for Richard J. Berkley, a geomagnetician with the US-IGY wintering party of 1957 at Wilkes Station.

[1] The island, along with neighbouring Cameron Island, the intervening sea and smaller islets, has been identified as a 97 ha Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it supports some 14,000 pairs of breeding Adélie penguins (as estimated from January 2011 satellite imagery).

It lies about 9 km east of Australia's Casey Station.

This Wilkes Land location article is a stub.