Spit Bay
bay
Spit Bay (53°6′S 73°45′E) is an open bight formed by the northeast coastline of Heard Island and Spit Point, the east extremity of the island. The name derives from the conspicuous Elephant Spit which forms the south and east shore of the bight, and may have been given by American sealers at Heard Island in the period following their initiation of sealing there in 1855. The name appears on a chart by the British, who utilized many names then in use by the sealers. Heard Island and McDonald Islands are located in the Southern Ocean, approximately 1,700 km (1,100 mi) from the Antarctic continent and 4,100 km (2,500 mi) southwest of Perth. As the only volcanically active subantarctic islands, they "open a window into the earth", thus providing the opportunity to observe ongoing geomorphic processes and glacial dynamics. The distinctive conservation value of Heard and McDonald – one of the world's rare pristine island ecosystems – lies in the complete absence of alien plants and animals, as well as human impact.
References
This article incorporates public domain material from "Spit Bay". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey.
“Spit Bay” enters the record as bay. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Spit can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Spit Bay” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Spit provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q141421. Authority coordinates are -53.100, 73.750. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1855.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spit Bay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.