140 articles
North Water Polynya
The North Water Polynya (Pikialasorsuaq, Sarvarjuaq) is the largest, most productive polynya in the Northern Hemisphere, an ~80,000 km² open-water area in northern Baffin Bay maintained by a Kane Basin ice arch, upwelling, and ice advection.
Northumberland Strait
The Northumberland Strait is an arm of the Gulf of St. Lawrence separating Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with Canada's warmest ocean waters.
Norwegian Sea
The Norwegian Sea (Norskehavet) is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean northwest of Norway, connecting the North Atlantic with the Arctic Ocean via the Nordic Seas.
OSPAR Convention
OSPAR Convention (Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic), signed 1992, in force 1998; replaces Oslo 1972 and Paris 1974 conventions; 15 governments plus EU governed by the OSPAR Commission through binding Decisions and non-binding Recommendations.
Ostrov Oleniy
Ostrov Oleniy (Остров Олений, "Deer Island") is the name of several separate islands in Russia, the largest lying in the southern Kara Sea off Siberia's Gyda Peninsula.
Parry Channel
Parry Channel is the deep east-west waterway of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the northern Northwest Passage route through M'Clure Strait, Viscount Melville Sound, Barrow Strait, and Lancaster Sound, named for explorer William Edward Parry.
Petroleum exploration in the Arctic
Petroleum exploration in the Arctic covers oil and gas exploration in Arctic Alaska, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, Greenland, and Norway, marked by large USGS resource estimates, Shell's failed Chukchi wells, shifting U.S. leasing policy, and severe oil-spill response limits.
Philippine Sea
The Philippine Sea is the world's largest marginal sea, about 5 million km², east of the Philippine archipelago in the western Pacific. Its floor is the Philippine Sea Plate, ringed by subduction zones and the source region of many typhoons.
Piper Alpha
Piper Alpha was an oil and gas production platform in the UK North Sea, destroyed by explosions and fire on 6 July 1988, killing 167 of the 226 men aboard.
Russian Arctic islands
Russian Arctic islands: Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, and Wrangel Island, Arctic Ocean archipelagos totaling over 180,000 km², largely glaciated, depopulated, militarized, and partly protected as national park and UNESCO reserve.
Samar Sea
Samar Sea, small semi-enclosed Philippine sea between southern Luzon and Eastern Visayas, bordered by Samar, Leyte, Masbate; 3,870 sq km, overfished since the 1980s, site of first Philippine red tide in 1983.
Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea, within the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, is the only sea without a land boundary, bounded by the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic, Canary, and Equatorial Currents and covered in holopelagic Sargassum.
Savu Sea
The Savu Sea (also spelled Sawu Sea; Indonesian Laut Sawu) is an East Indian Archipelago sea in eastern Indonesia, enclosed by the islands of Flores, Sumba, and Timor.
Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow is a large enclosed natural harbor in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, used as the Royal Navy's main fleet base in both world wars.
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov, historically Lake Maeotis, is a shallow brackish inland sea of Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the Kerch Strait.
Sea of Crete
The Sea of Crete (Greek: Kritiko Pelagos, "Cretan Sea") is the southernmost part of the Aegean Sea, lying between Crete and the Cyclades, and the Aegean's deepest basin at 2,500 m.
Sea of Japan (日本海)
Sea of Japan (日本海), also called East Sea: a semi-enclosed Northwest Pacific marginal sea bordered by Japan, Russia, and Korea, area 1.013 million km2, max depth 3,700 m, connected by four shallow straits, a back-arc basin opened from the Eocene, warming faster than the global ocean.
Sea of Marmara
Sea of Marmara (Marmara Denizi), Turkey's inland sea linking Black Sea and Mediterranean via Bosphorus and Dardanelles; lies on North Anatolian Fault with major seismic gap, two-layer Black Sea–Mediterranean water exchange, and 2021 mucilage crisis.
Sea of Okhotsk (Охотское море)
Sea of Okhotsk (Охотское море), a marginal sea of the North Pacific between Siberia, Sakhalin, the Kurils, and Hokkaido; the Southern Hemisphere's northern counterpart in seasonal sea ice, source of North Pacific intermediate water, major pollock fishery, and site of declining ice cover.
Sea of the Hebrides
Sea of the Hebrides: Atlantic sea between Scotland's Inner and Outer Hebrides; also a large Scottish Nature Conservation MPA protecting basking shark, minke whale, fronts, and marine geological features.
Second Thomas Shoal
Second Thomas Shoal (Ayungin Shoal; Ren'ai Jiao 仁爱礁) is a low-tide elevation reef in the Spratly Islands, South China Sea, occupied by the Philippines via the grounded warship BRP Sierra Madre since 1999 and contested by China, with a 2024 provisional resupply arrangement.
Seno Otway
Seno Otway (Seno de Otway) is an inland sea in Chile's Magallanes region, north of the Strait of Magellan, linked to Seno Skyring by Fitz Roy Channel and to the Pacific by Jerónimo Channel; about 80 km long, once a 5,700 km² proglacial lake.
Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海)
The Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海, Setonaikai) is Japan's semi-enclosed sea between Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, about 450 km long, mean depth 38 m, governed since 1973 by a special conservation law and total pollutant load control.
Severnaya Zemlya (Северная Земля)
Severnaya Zemlya (Северная Земля, "Northern Land"), originally Nicholas II Land, is a Russian Arctic archipelago of about 36,800 km² between the Kara and Laptev seas, discovered in 1913 and mapped by the 1930–32 Ushakov–Urvantsev expedition.
Shtokman field (Штокмановское месторождение)
Shtokman field (Штокмановское месторождение), a giant Barents Sea gas condensate field 600 km from Murmansk with 3.9 tcm of gas; Gazprom-Total-Statoil consortium suspended development in 2012 over $30 billion costs and US shale gas.
Siberian Shelf
The Siberian Shelf comprises the Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian seas, the world's widest, shallowest continental shelf (20–30 m average depth), dominated by Siberian river freshwater, relic subsea permafrost, and rapid sea-ice retreat.
Sibuyan Sea
The Sibuyan Sea is an inland sea of the central Philippine archipelago between Tablas, Panay, Masbate, and Luzon's Bicol region, linking the Pacific to the South China and Sulu Seas.
Skagerrak
Skagerrak: deep arm of the North Sea between Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, bounded by Hanstholm–Lindesnes and Skagen–Pater Noster; about 32,000 km², up to 700 m deep in the Norwegian Trench, with cyclonic circulation and Baltic outflow.
Solomon Sea
Solomon Sea: marginal sea of the southwest Pacific between eastern Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, part of the Coral Sea, about 720,000 sq km; main pathway carrying roughly 20 Sv of South Pacific water to the equator.
Solway Firth
Solway Firth: mega-tidal estuary of the Irish Sea between Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, and Cumbria, England; carries the Anglo-Scottish border via the River Sark, has the UK's second largest tidal range, and holds the 436 km² Upper Solway Ramsar site and Solway Firth SAC.