Baffin Island located on the southeastern coast. Until 1987, the town shared the name Frobisher Bay with the bay on which it is located. To the south lies Hudson Strait, separating Baffin Island from mainland Quebec. South of the western end of the island is the Fury and Hecla Strait which separates the island from the Melville Peninsula on the mainland. To the east are Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, with Greenland beyond. The Foxe Basin, the Gulf of Boothia and Lancaster Sound separate Baffin Island from the rest of the archipelago to the west and north. The Baffin Mountains run along
Davis Strait Davis Strait is underlain by complex geological features of buried grabens (basins) and ridges, probably formed by strike-slip faulting during Paleogene times about 45 million to 62 million years ago. The strike-slip faulting transferred plate-tectonic motions in the Labrador Sea to Baffin Bay. It is the world's broadest strait. With a water depth of between one and two thousand meters the strait is substantially shallower than the Labrador Sea to the south or Baffin Bay to the north. The strait is famous for its fierce tides that can range from , which discouraged many earlier explorers. US Geological Survey has