West Ice Shelf

The West Ice Shelf is a prominent ice shelf extending about 288 km (179 mi) in an east-west direction along the Leopold and Astrid Coast in East Antarctica between Barrier Bay and Posadowsky Bay. It was discovered and named by the First German Antarctica Expedition, 1901–1903, under Dr. Erich von Drygalski. The toponym describes the direction in which the German expedition first viewed the ice shelf. Their limited westward view became a prolonged one; on February 21, 1902, the ship became stuck in the ice. It remained there imprisoned by the pack ice until February 8, 1903.