877 articles
Innocent passage
Innocent passage: the law-of-the-sea right of foreign ships to traverse a coastal state's territorial sea non-prejudicially, codified in the 1958 and 1982 conventions; warship passage remains contested.
Inside Passage
The Inside Passage is a protected ~950-mile (1,530 km) coastal waterway through British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, from Puget Sound to Skagway, sheltered by over 1,500 islands; a historic Indigenous, steamship, ferry, and cruise route.
Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation
The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) is a Pacific-wide pattern of decadal sea surface temperature variability resembling El Niño, first described by Power and colleagues in 1999.
International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean
IBCSO is GEBCO's authoritative digital bathymetric model of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Version 1 (2013) covered south of 60°S; Version 2 (2022) extends to 50°S at 500 m resolution, AWI-led under Seabed 2030.
International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas
ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, CICTA) is the tuna RFMO for the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas, founded 1966, Madrid-based, 56 members, managing tunas, swordfish, billfish, and sharks.
Inútil Bay
Inútil Bay (Bahía Inútil, Useless Bay), named 1827, is a 4776 km² semi-enclosed bay on northwest Tierra del Fuego, Chile, linked to the Strait of Magellan and Almirantazgo Sound, noted for poor anchorage and rich marine biodiversity.
Ionian Basin
The Ionian Basin is the deep abyssal basin underlying the Ionian Sea between southern Italy, Libya, and western Greece, the deepest regional sea of the Mediterranean.
Ionian Sea (Ιόνιο Πέλαγος)
The Ionian Sea (Ιόνιο Πέλαγος), between Italy and western Greece, is the Mediterranean's deepest sub-basin (5,121 m), key to basin ventilation, rated 'poor' in 2022 environmental status, with a planned 14,000 km2 Greek marine park.
Irish Sea
The Irish Sea separates Ireland from Great Britain, linking to the Atlantic via St. George's Channel and the North Channel. Key facts: glacial Irish Sea Ice Stream history, 1–2 m/s peak spring tidal currents, mud and gravel seabed, and major offshore wind development.
Irminger Basin
The Irminger Basin, often called the Irminger Sea, is a deep ocean basin of the subpolar North Atlantic between East Greenland and Iceland, south of the Denmark Strait.
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.
Ironbottom Sound
Ironbottom Sound (formerly Savo Sound) is the water between Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and Nggela Islands, Solomon Islands, named for the 100-plus warships sunk in the 1942–43 Guadalcanal night naval battles.
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.
Izu-Ogasawara Trench
Izu-Ogasawara Trench (Izu-Bonin Trench), a 1,122 km Northwest Pacific trench where the Pacific plate subducts beneath the Philippine Sea plate at 45-56 mm/yr; 9,780 m deepest point in Japan, weakly coupled, largely aseismic boundary.
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), Saint-Malo navigator, made three voyages (1534, 1535–36, 1541–42) for Francis I, exploring the Gulf and River St. Lawrence, naming Canada, and founding Charlesbourg-Royal.
Jakarta Bay
Jakarta Bay is a shallow bay on the northwest coast of Java, Indonesia, immediately north of Jakarta, receiving untreated wastewater from about 20 million people and 2,050 industries.
James Bay
James Bay (Baie James) is the southern arm of Hudson Bay between Quebec and Ontario, site of Henry Hudson's 1610-11 wintering, the 16,527 MW James Bay hydroelectric project, and the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.
Japan Basin
Japan Basin (日本海盆), the deepest of the three deep basins of the Sea of Japan, near 4,000 m deep, with 8-10 km oceanic crust formed by Miocene back-arc spreading and source of Japan Sea Proper Water.
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.
Jervis Bay
Jervis Bay: temperate embayment (~124 km2) on the NSW south coast, about 200 km from Sydney. Protected by Jervis Bay Marine Park, Booderee National Park, and the Commonwealth Jervis Bay Territory.
John Cabot
John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto, Zuan Chabotto), Venetian-born Italian navigator sailing for Henry VII of England from Bristol; his 1497 voyage made the first known European landfall in North America since the Norse, and his 1498 expedition vanished.
Jones Sound
Jones Sound: strait between Ellesmere and Devon islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, one of three main Arctic-to-Baffin Bay passages, 30 km wide, 190 m deep sill, 0.3 Sv flow, recurring polynya.
Joseph Bonaparte Gulf
Joseph Bonaparte Gulf: large shallow macrotidal inlet of the Timor Sea between the Kimberley (WA) and Arnhem Land (NT), 360 km wide, named by the French Baudin expedition; hosts the 8,597 km² Joseph Bonaparte Gulf Marine Park and a banana prawn fishery.
Juan de Fuca Ridge
The Juan de Fuca Ridge is a 500 km submarine mountain chain in the northeast Pacific where seafloor spreading separates the Pacific and Juan de Fuca Plates.
Kalpataru Ridge
Kalpataru Ridge is an elongated undersea ridge in the Indian Ocean near 27°S, 67°E, discovered in 2012 by the Russian vessel Akademik Nikolay Strakhov and named in 2024 by SCUFN on a proposal from India's NCPOR.
Kamantigi Ridge
Kamantigi Ridge, an undersea ridge in the western Pacific (Philippine Sea) at about 14.27°N, 125.20°E, 33 km x 13 km, relief 1,291 m; named after the Kamantigi plant (Impatiens balsamina), proposed by NAMRIA at SCUFN-37.
Kamchatka Gulf
Kamchatka Gulf (Камчатский залив), gulf of the Pacific on eastern Kamchatka, Russia; northernmost Pacific-coast gulf, about 148 km long, 74 km wide, up to 2000 m deep at the entrance, near the Kamchatka River mouth.
Kandalaksha Gulf
Kandalaksha Gulf (Кандалакшский залив), also Kandalaksha Bay, is the northwesternmost gulf of Russia's White Sea, 185 km long with depths to 350 m, a Ramsar wetland hosting half the White Sea common eider population, the Kandalakshsky zapovednik, and ports including Kandalaksha and the Vitino oil terminal.
Kandla Port
Kandla Port (Deendayal Port Authority), a major Indian government seaport in Kandla Creek, 90 km inside the Gulf of Kutch, Gujarat; founded after Partition to replace Karachi; handled 150.16 MMT in FY2024-25 and a record 160.11 Mt in FY2025-26, ranking second to Paradip among major ports, with Mundra as its nearby private rival.