Several Antarctic cruise ships travel to the Amundsen Sea continental shelf, which is one of the most remote areas of coastal Antarctica. Nils Larsen gave the sea its name during an expedition in 1929 after Ronald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer who led the first team to reach the South Pole in 1911. The Amundsen is an arm of the Southern Ocean that lies off the coast of Marie Byrd Land between Cape Dart and Suple Island. The majority of the sea is covered by the Thwaites Ice Tongue, which is a large sheet of glacial ice and snow that extends from the mainland of Antarctica into the southern portion of the Amundsen Sea.
