right|thumb|290px|The Nathaniel B. Palmer (icebreaker)|RV Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel using the iceport at [[Bay of Whales, Antarctica.]] An iceport is a more-or-less permanent indentation in the front of an ice shelf, that can serve as a natural ice harbour. Though useful, they are not always reliable, as calving of surrounding ice shelves can render an iceport temporarily unstable and unusable.
right|thumb|290px|The Nathaniel B. Palmer (icebreaker)|RV Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel using the iceport at [[Bay of Whales, Antarctica.]] An iceport is a more-or-less permanent indentation in the front of an ice shelf, that can serve as a natural ice harbour. Though useful, they are not always reliable, as calving of surrounding ice shelves can render an iceport temporarily unstable and unusable.
==Historical and present use of iceports== Iceports have played a critical role in Antarctic exploration. For example, the Bay of Whales (discovered and named by Ernest Shackleton in the Nimrod in 1908) served as the base for several important Antarctic expeditions, including: 1910-1912: Amundsen's South Pole expedition, led by Roald Amundsen 1928-1930: Richard Evelyn Byrd - First expedition 1933-1935: Richard Evelyn Byrd - Second expedition 1939-1941: United States Antarctic Service Expedition, led by Richard Evelyn Byrd
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).