140 articles
Irminger Sea
Irminger Sea: marginal sea of the North Atlantic between Greenland and Iceland, south of Denmark Strait. Site of deep convection, the Irminger Gyre, and a center of subpolar AMOC variability.
Italian Riviera
Italian Riviera (Riviera ligure), the Ligurian coast from Nice to La Spezia, divided into Riviera di Ponente and di Levante; mild climate, Genoa, Cinque Terre, Portofino, Sanremo, and UNESCO sites.
Ixtoc I oil spill
Ixtoc I (IXTOC-I) was a Pemex exploratory well that blew out in the Bay of Campeche, Gulf of Mexico, on June 3, 1979, releasing roughly 3.5 million barrels of crude until March 1980, then the world's largest oil spill.
Java Sea
The Java Sea (Laut Jawa) is a shallow Sunda Shelf sea between Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi, exposed during glacial lowstands, a major Indonesian fishing ground (FMA 712), and site of the 1942 Battle of the Java Sea.
Kara Sea
The Kara Sea is a shallow marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean between Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya, receiving about 45% of all river runoff to the Arctic.
Kattegat
Kattegat, also Kattegatt, the sea area between Jutland, Zealand, and southern Sweden linking the Baltic to the North Sea; about 30,000 km², mean depth ~23 m, Dutch 'cat hole' name, OSPAR eutrophication problem area.
Khatanga Gulf
Khatanga Gulf (Khatanga Bay, Хатангский залив) is a large tidal estuary of the Khatanga River in the southwestern Laptev Sea off the Taymyr Peninsula, Russia, known for intense tidal mixing, an unusually large river plume, ice cover October to July, and Rosneft's Khatangsky oil license area.
Labrador Current
Labrador Current: cold, low-salinity polar-origin current flowing southeastward along Baffin Island, Labrador, and Newfoundland; seasonal transports of 5-17 Sv; joins the Gulf Stream to form the North Atlantic Current.
Labrador Sea
The Labrador Sea is a North Atlantic marginal sea between Labrador, Greenland, and Newfoundland, the main formation site of Labrador Sea Water through winter deep convection reaching 500–2,500 m, feeding the AMOC and deep-ocean oxygen and carbon uptake.
Laccadive Sea
The Laccadive Sea, also called the Lakshadweep Sea, is a body of water in the northern Indian Ocean bordering India, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka.
Langeled pipeline
The Langeled pipeline is a Norwegian subsea gas pipeline carrying gas from Nyhamna, via Sleipner, to Easington, England; it was the world's longest at completion in 2006.
Laptev Sea
The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean off Siberia, between the Taymyr Peninsula and the New Siberian Islands, renamed in 1935 for the Laptev brothers.
Lessepsian migration
Lessepsian migration, or Erythrean invasion, is the one-way movement of Red Sea marine species into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal (opened 1869), named after Ferdinand de Lesseps; over 400 multicellular species and 100 fish species have crossed.
Leukimma Pr.
Leukimma Pr. (Λευκίμμη, Leucimme) is an ancient promontory of Corcyra (Corfu), the modern Akra Lefkimis on the island's southeast coast; named by Thucydides, Strabo, Ptolemy, and Pliny, and site of the 435 BC Corcyraean naval victory trophy over Corinth.
Ligurian Sea
Ligurian Sea (Mar Ligure), IHO sea area in the northwestern Mediterranean between Ventimiglia, La Spezia, and Corsica; deep basin with cyclonic gyre, Liguro-Provençal Current, 454 fish species, and warming of about 0.7 °C since 1948.
Lincoln Sea
Lincoln Sea: Arctic Ocean marginal sea off northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island, head of Nares Strait. A Last Ice Area stronghold of thick multi-year ice, bifurcation of Canadian and Eurasian Basin outflow waters.
List of oil and gas fields of the North Sea
The oil and gas fields of the North Sea are offshore petroleum deposits developed since the late 1960s by the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
Mare Nostrum
Mare Nostrum, Latin for 'our sea', was the Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea, revived by Fascist Italy as imperial rhetoric and reused for Italy's 2013-2014 migrant search-and-rescue naval operation.
Marine Atlantic
Marine Atlantic Inc. (Marine Atlantique), Canadian federal Crown corporation since 1986 (formerly CN Marine) operating the constitutionally required North Sydney–Port aux Basques ferry and seasonal Argentia route with four ice-class vessels.
Marine life of the Mediterranean Sea
The marine life of the Mediterranean Sea comprises about 17,000 recorded species, with the small, nutrient-poor sea supporting 4–18% of the world's marine biodiversity, including bluefin tuna spawning grounds and the threatened Mediterranean monk seal.
Messinian salinity crisis
Messinian salinity crisis: late Miocene (5.97–5.33 Ma) isolation of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, up to 2.5 km drawdown, Mediterranean Salt Giant deposition, Lago-Mare phase, and Zanclean megaflood refilling.
Molucca Sea
Molucca Sea, marginal sea of the western Pacific in eastern Indonesia between Sulawesi and Halmahera; about 200,000 km², maximum depth 4,810 m; site of an active arc-arc collision with double-verging subduction of the Molucca Sea Plate and frequent earthquakes.
Montara oil spill
Montara oil spill: 2009 Timor Sea well blowout at PTTEP's Montara platform off Western Australia, releasing about 4.7 million liters of crude over 74 days; Australia's largest offshore-platform spill and third largest overall.
Moray Firth
The Moray Firth is Scotland's largest estuarine embayment (5,230 km²) on the North Sea coast between Duncansby Head and Fraserburgh, home to the North Sea's only resident bottlenose dolphin population, protected by a 2005 Special Area of Conservation.
Morecambe Bay
Morecambe Bay is a large, shallow, sandy bay on the north-west coast of England, spanning Cumbria and Lancashire; it is the second-largest embayment in the UK after the Wash.
Natural resources of the Arctic
Natural resources of the Arctic: petroleum, minerals, and fisheries north of the Arctic Circle across eight countries. USGS estimates 90 billion barrels oil and 1,669 tcf gas, mostly offshore and Russian, largely undeveloped due to cost, climate, and regulation.
Nine-dash line (九段线)
The nine-dash line (九段线) is the U-shaped demarcation on Chinese maps claiming most of the South China Sea. Drawn as an eleven-dash line in 1947, it was ruled to have no legal basis for historic rights by the 2016 UNCLOS arbitration tribunal.
Nord Stream 2 (Северный поток — 2)
Nord Stream 2 (Северный поток — 2) is a Gazprom-owned twin Baltic Sea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, completed in 2021 at a cost of about $11 billion but never commissioned after Germany froze certification in 2022 and sabotage destroyed one string.
North Aral Sea
North Aral Sea (Lesser Aral), the Kazakhstan portion of the former Aral Sea fed by the Syr Darya. Split from the South Aral by 1987; the 2005 Kokaral dam restored its level, area, salinity, and fisheries.
North Sea
The North Sea is a marginal sea between the British Isles and continental Europe, formerly the land bridge Doggerland, now central to European offshore wind: 300 GW targeted by 2050 under the North Seas Energy Cooperation.