The coast was sighted by members of the US Antarctic Service by flights from the USS Bear during February 1940. It was mapped in detail by the United States Geological Survey from surveys and from U.S. Navy air photographs, 1960–1966. Eights Coast was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for James Eights of Albany, New York, a geologist on the ship Annawan during 1830, who performed geological investigations of the South Shetland Islands, and who cruised westward on the Annawan, in company with the ship Penguin, to 103°W. Eights, the earliest American scientist in the Antarctic, discovered the first known fossils in the Antarctic region, a tree section in the South Shetland Islands. As a result of these investigations Eights, during 1833, published in the Transactions of the Albany Institute (Vol. 2) what proved to be remarkably accurate observations and conclusions concerning the natural phenomena of the region.[1][2]
