Port Leopold, Prince Leopold Island and Elwin Bay

Port Leopold (coord|73|50|59|N|90|19|59|W) is the site of a former Hudson's Bay Company trading post at the far northeast corner of Somerset Island in Nunavut, Canada. It is also the place where the English explorer James Clark Ross wintered in 1848 during his search for the missing Franklin expedition.

To the northeast of Port Leopold, in Barrow Strait, lies Prince Leopold Island (coord|74|0|N|90|0|W), an oval-shaped island fourteen kilometres E-W by eight kilometre N-S. The island and its birds are protected under Canadian legislation as a Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Large numbers of Thick-billed Murres, Northern fulmars and Black-legged Kittiwakes breed on the cliff ledges, arriving in the vicinity in May or early June and departing by mid-September. The island is the most important station for breeding marine birds in the Canadian Arctic, having larger numbers and a greater diversity of species than any other site. Intensive studies of the breeding seabirds were carried out in 1975-77 and in a dozen subsequent years, providing evidence of how ice conditions affect the breeding birds.

South of Port Leopold, a few miles further down the eastern coast of Somerset Island, lies Elwin Bay (coord|73|31|59|N|90|55|0|W), filled with the skeletons and bones of several hundred beluga left by whalers. Many hunters died on whaling expeditions.