It is located north of the Arctic Circle within the large, shallow basin of the Melville Hills.

[1] The Croker River flows north from Bluenose Lake to the Arctic Ocean, entering at Dolphin and Union Strait.

[2] It was officially named in 1953 by John Kelsall and James Mitchell subsequent to their biological investigation of the previously unnamed lake.

[3] The area barren-ground caribou are divided, genetically, into two herds, Bluenose-east and Bluenose-west.

[3] Birds that frequent the area include Arctic loon, Arctic tern, Baird's sandpiper, black-bellied plover, buff-breasted sandpiper, Canada goose, glaucous gull, golden eagle, golden plover, herring gull, king eider, Lapland longspur, long-tailed jaeger, mallard, northern phalarope, oldsquaw, parasitic jaeger, pectoral sandpiper, pintail, raven, red-breasted merganser, red-throated loon, rough-legged hawk, sanderling, semipalmated sandpiper, short-eared owl, snow bunting, snowy owl, tree sparrow, water pipit, whistling swan, willow ptarmigan, and yellow-billed loon.