Other major glaciers drain into the southern end of the Amery Ice Shelf at 73° S where the marine part of the system starts at the modern grounding zone.

[1] Depths to the bed beneath the Amery Ice Shelf are poorly known in detail but it is clearly over-deepened, reaching around -2500 m MSL close to the grounding zone.

Ocean Drilling Program Site 1167 indicates that thick debris flow intervals are separated by thin mudstone horizons deposited when the ice had retreated from the shelf edge.

[5] Portions of the bay were sighted in January and February 1931 by Norwegian whalers and the British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE).

It was explored in February 1935 by Norwegian whaler Captain Klarius Mikkelsen in the ship Thorshavn, and was mapped in considerable detail from aerial photographs taken by the Lars Christensen Expedition of 1936–37.