The Abbot Ice Shelf is an ice shelf 250 mi (400 km) long and 40 mi (60 km) wide, bordering Eights Coast from Cape Waite to Phrogner Point in Antarctica. Thurston Island lies along the northern edge of the western half of this ice shelf; other sizable islands (Sherman, Carpenter, Dustin, Johnson, McNamara, Farwell and Dendtler) lie partly or wholly within this shelf.
The ice shelf was sighted by members of U.S. Antarctic Service (USAS) in flights from the ship Bear, in February 1940, and its western portion was delineated from air photos taken by U.S. Navy (USN) Operation Highjump, 1946–47. The full extent was mapped by USGS from USN air photos of 1966. Named by US-ACAN for Rear Admiral J. Lloyd Abbot, Jr., Commanding Officer, U.S. Naval Support Force, Antarctica, February 1967 to June 1969.
Famous quotes containing the words abbot, ice and/or shelf:
“Thou must tell me to one penny what I am worth.”
—Unknown. King John and the Abbot of Canterbury (l. 28)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The boy seemed to have fallen
From shelf to shelf of someone’s rage.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)