The lake is located in a buffer zone of three major West Antarctic glaciers.

[1] This favors the hypothesis that the lake could support endemic life, which would have developed in extreme isolation.

The first signs of the lake were detected during Antarctic summer in January 2014, when a mobile research station team journeyed through the central plateau of West Antarctica.

Measurements showed unusual subglacial radar returns, indicating the presence of a waterbody at some 2.6 km depth under the ice.

The findings were published in a Geophysical Research Letters report by four members of the CECs Glaciology Laboratory.