The name was adopted by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names on the recommendation of Gerald L. Kooyman, a United States Antarctic Research Program biologist who studied physiological characteristics related to diving in the Weddell seal in this vicinity, 1963–64 and 1964–65.
It was named by US-ACAN (2006) after Dr. Warren M. Zapol, Department of Anesthesia, Massachusetts General Hospital, whose long-term research near McMurdo Station on diving physiology of Weddell seals (begun mid-1970s) was part of a larger effort to understand how gas is handled in mammals as part of a search to understand SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
seal | Seal | Lord Privy Seal | Seal Beach, California | Lord Keeper of the Great Seal | The Seventh Seal | Seal (musician) | Seal Beach | Great Seal of the United States | Great Seal | Weddell Sea | seal hunting | Seal (device) | Weddell seal | The Seal of Neptune | The Seal Cub Clubbing Club | Seal of the President of the United States | Seal Island | RCA Red Seal Records | Kevin Seal | James Weddell | Imperial Seal of Japan | Acharya Brojendra Nath Seal College | William Weddell | This Could Be Heaven (Seal song) | Seal of the Confessional | Seal of San Francisco | Seal of California | Seal Island, Nova Scotia | Seal hunting |
The site has been designated an Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA 137) because it supports an unusual small breeding population of Weddell Seals, which is not only the most southerly known, but which has also been physically isolated from other populations by the advance of the McMurdo and Ross ice shelves.
James Weddell (1787–1834), English navigator and Antarctic explorer; eponym of Weddell Sea, Weddell Island, Weddell Glacier, and Weddell seal