877 articles
Kane Basin
Kane Basin is the wide, shallow central basin of Nares Strait between Ellesmere Island and northwestern Greenland, about 27,000 km² in area, named for explorer Elisha Kent Kane.
Kane Fracture Zone
Kane Fracture Zone, a major Atlantic oceanic fracture zone crossing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge near 24°N; ~2,800 km long, offsets the ridge over 150 km, and carries anomalously thin 2–3 km crust with exposed mantle rocks.
Kao Bay
Kao Bay (Kau Bay, Teluk Kao), a 470-m-deep pear-shaped silled marine basin between the northern arms of Halmahera, Indonesia; poorly ventilated, anoxic sediments, El Niño-driven deep-water renewal, glacial freshwater-lake phase, mercury and arsenic in fish.
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.
Kara Strait
Kara Strait, also called Kara Gates, connects the Kara and Barents Seas at southern Novaya Zemlya, Russia. It is the western gateway of the Northern Sea Route, 45 km wide and up to 119 m deep, with strong internal tides and polar bear migration.
Karimata Strait
Karimata Strait (Selat Karimata): shallow Indonesian strait between Belitung and Borneo linking the South China Sea to the Java Sea; carries the South China Sea throughflow branch (about 0.75 Sv annual mean), monsoon-driven seasonal reversal, diurnal tides, and productive squid fisheries.
Katchatheevu (கச்சத்தீவு)
Katchatheevu (கச்சத்தீவு) is a small uninhabited island in the Palk Strait, placed under Sri Lankan sovereignty by a 1974 agreement and known for its St Anthony's festival.
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.
Kealakekua Bay
Kealakekua Bay is an inlet on the western coast of the island of Hawaiʻi, known as the site of Captain James Cook's death in 1779.
Keller Inlet
Keller Inlet is an ice-filled inlet between Cape Little and Cape Fiske on the Lassiter Coast, Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula, at 74°16'S 61°10'W, named by Finn Ronne after Louis Keller of Beaumont, Texas.
Kennedy Channel
Kennedy Channel, a section of Nares Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, named for U.S. Navy Secretary John Pendleton Kennedy; sighted ice-free by Morton in 1854 during Kane's expedition.
Kerch Strait
Kerch Strait, the sole passage between the Black Sea and Sea of Azov between Crimea and the Taman Peninsula; site of the 2018 naval incident, the 19-km Kerch Bridge, and the 2026 UNCLOS arbitration between Ukraine and Russia.
Kerguelen Plateau
The Kerguelen Plateau is a large, mainly volcanic submarine plateau in the southern Indian Ocean, formed by the Kerguelen mantle plume and carrying the Kerguelen Archipelago and Heard and McDonald Islands.
Kermadec Ridge
The Kermadec Ridge is the active submarine volcanic arc east of New Zealand, part of the 2,500 km Tonga-Kermadec system formed by subduction of the Pacific plate.
Kermadec Trench
Kermadec Trench: oceanic trench north of New Zealand where the Pacific Plate subducts beneath the Australian Plate; deepest point Scholl Deep, about 10,106 m; explored by Galathea (1952), NIWA (2017), and Fendouzhe crewed dives (2022).
Khanjar Ridge
Khanjar Ridge is a named undersea ridge in the Arabian Sea, listed as type Ridge in the Marine Regions gazetteer near the Oman Basin and Murray Ridge; its name echoes the khanjar, Oman's national dagger emblem.
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.
Khuran Straits
Khuran Straits (Khouran Straits, Tang-e-Khuran), shallow straits between Qeshm Island and mainland Iran in the Persian Gulf; 100,000 ha Ramsar site no. 50 (1975) with the Gulf's largest Avicennia marina mangrove and mudflat ecosystem, strong tidal currents up to 1.85 m/s, and major waterbird colonies.
King Frederick VI Coast
King Frederick VI Coast, or Kong Frederik den VI Kyst, is the fjord-indented southeastern coast of Greenland, named by W.A. Graah in 1829 after King Frederik VI.
King George Bay
King George Bay is a bay indenting the south coast of King George Island, South Shetland Islands, between Lions Rump and Turret Point; named 24 January 1820 by Bransfield's expedition for the reigning British sovereign.
Knipovich Ridge
The Knipovich Ridge is an ultraslow-spreading, highly oblique section of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge system in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, extending about 500 km between Svalbard and northeast Greenland.
Kola Bay (Кольский залив)
Kola Bay, also known as Kola Inlet, is a fjord-shaped inlet of the Barents Sea in northwest Russia whose ice-free water hosts the city of Murmansk.
Kon-Tiki expedition
The Kon-Tiki expedition (1947): Thor Heyerdahl and five crew crossed about 8,000 km from Callao, Peru to Raroia atoll in 101 days on a balsa-log raft, testing South American raft voyaging to Polynesia; the migration theory itself was rejected.
Korea Bay
Korea Bay (서해 북부) is the northeastern embayment of the Yellow Sea, below China's Liaodong Peninsula between Liaoning and North Korea. The Yalu River enters it at Dandong; drift ice up to 35 cm forms there in winter.
Korea Strait (대한해협)
The Korea Strait (대한해협), also called the Tsushima Strait, links the East China Sea to the Sea of Japan between Korea and Japan's Kyushu and Honshu.
Kotzebue Sound
Kotzebue Sound: large shallow embayment (>90,000 km2, depth 10–18 m) of the southeast Chukchi Sea, northwest Alaska, named by Otto von Kotzebue in 1816; receives the Noatak, Kobuk, and Selawik Rivers; hub of Iñupiaq subsistence and the Sisualik trade fair.
Kronotsky Gulf
Kronotsky Gulf (Кроноцкий залив), a Pacific gulf on eastern Kamchatka between the Shipunsky and Kronotsky peninsulas, 68.5 km long, up to 1,500 m deep, with a major Holocene tsunami record and pollock spawning canyons.
Kuril Basin
Kuril Basin, deep back-arc basin in the southern Sea of Okhotsk behind the Kuril island arc; fan-shaped, about 3,000 m deep, formed by Oligocene-Miocene back-arc spreading, and the mixing zone producing Okhotsk Sea Intermediate Water for North Pacific ventilation.
Kuril-Kamchatka Trench
Kuril-Kamchatka Trench: a ~2,100 km northwest Pacific subduction trench where the Pacific plate dives beneath the Okhotsk microplate; re-surveyed at 9,604 m, source of the 1952 M9.0 and 2025 M8.8 earthquakes, and host of chemosynthetic hadal communities.
Kuwae
Kuwae (Tombuk eruption) is a submarine caldera volcano between Epi and Tongoa, Vanuatu, formed by a mid-15th century VEI 6-7 eruption, variously dated about 1420-1453, and debated as the source of a major 1450s ice-core sulfate event.