Foxe Basin

Roughly circular extension of the Atlantic Ocean, 500 km/300 mi across at its widest point, located in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. It lies between Baffin Island (to the east and north), the Melville Peninsula (to the west), and Southampton and other islands (to the south, and separating it from Hudson Bay).

Named after Luke Foxe, the British navigator who explored it in 1631, the basin is a shallow depression on the Canadian Shield. Of the several islands it contains, Prince Charles is the largest. In the northwest, it is connected to the Gulf of Boothia by the narrow Fury and Hecla Strait. Its southern end is connected to the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay by the 320 km/200 mi-long Foxe Channel. As the Foxe Basin is usually icebound, it does not form part of the Northwest Passage.