A transect of cores was taken from shelf to deep sea west of the Antarctic Peninsula off Marguerite Bay using a 12 m RVS piston corer, box corer and BGS vibrocorer deployed from RSS James Clark Ross cruise JR71 (12 days sea-time in 2001-2002). Successful coring and examination of sediments now on and immediately beneath the sea floor, which provided the deforming bed of the former ice stream, enhanced our understanding of conditions beneath ice streams.

Data was collected as part of a project was to reconstruct the Late Quaternary dynamics of the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet in Marguerite Bay and to compare sedimentation and ice-rafted debris records with the Larsen Ice Shelf area, on the other side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The mapping of streamlined sedimentary bedforms on the outer shelf has allowed the dimensions of a former fast-flowing ice stream present at the Last Glacial Maximum to be defined. This, in turn, enabled estimates of the past magnitude of ice flow through this glacial system to be calculated.