877 articles
Plata Passage
Plata Passage, also Admiral Merino Channel (Canal Almirante Merino), is a passage in Wilhelmina Bay, Antarctic Peninsula, separating Brooklyn Island from the Danco Coast; charted by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition in 1898 and named for the Rio de la Plata.
Plymouth Sound
Plymouth Sound is a large natural harbour in southwest England where the Tamar and Plym meet the English Channel. It anchors the Plymouth Sound and Estuaries MPA and the UK's first National Marine Park, with over 200 shipwrecks and Devonport Dockyard on its shores.
Polynesian navigation
Polynesian navigation, or wayfinding, is non-instrument Pacific navigation by stars, swells, winds, clouds, and birds. Key facts: Sharp's accidental-voyage theory, Hōkūleʻa's 1976 Hawaii–Tahiti voyage under Mau Piailug, and the modern voyaging revival.
Porcupine Abyssal Plain
Porcupine Abyssal Plain: flat abyssal seafloor in the Northeast Atlantic southwest of Ireland, about 4,850 m deep, home since 1985 to the PAP-SO ocean observatory, one of two abyssal long-term time-series sites worldwide.
Porpoise Bay
Porpoise Bay names several bays: one at the head of Sechelt Inlet, British Columbia (named 1860 by Captain Richards), a 170-km-wide embayment in Wilkes Land, Antarctica (named for the brig Porpoise), and a Catlins beach bay in New Zealand.
Port Jackson
Port Jackson, commonly called Sydney Harbour, is the drowned valley estuary at Sydney, New South Wales, named by Cook in 1770 and the site of the First Fleet's 1788 settlement at Sydney Cove.
Port of Palos
Port of Palos (Puerto Histórico de Palos), the Tinto river port of Palos de la Frontera, Huelva, Spain, from which Columbus's Santa María, Pinta, and Niña sailed on 3 August 1492; buried after 1503, rediscovered in 1992.
Port Phillip
Port Phillip (Port Phillip Bay) is a 1,930 km² shallow bay in Victoria, Australia, entrance the Rip, home of Melbourne and its port, Ramsar wetlands, and Victoria's biggest recreational fishery.
Powell Basin
Powell Basin: small ocean basin off the northernmost Antarctic Peninsula (50°W, 62°S), northwestern Weddell Sea; formed by rifting of the South Orkney Microcontinent, with slow seafloor spreading roughly 29.7-21.8 Ma; distinct from Lake Powell, Utah.
Praia do Tonel
Praia do Tonel is a west-facing beach and surf break at Sagres, Algarve, below the Sagres Fortress, known for consistent Atlantic swell, strong rip currents, Blue Flag status, and winter surf up to 2 m.
Primero de Mayo Bay
Primero de Mayo Bay (bahía Primero de Mayo; Fumarole Bay, Bahía Septiembre) is a bay on the SW side of Port Foster, Deception Island, South Shetland Islands, named by Argentina's 1942-43 expedition after the ship 1 de Mayo, with active beach fumaroles.
Prince Albert Sound
Prince Albert Sound (Kangiryuaq) is a 120-mile-long Arctic sound on Victoria Island, Northwest Territories, Canada, an inlet of Amundsen Gulf separating Wollaston Peninsula; known for ringed seal habitat, Ulukhaktok at its entrance, and 1851 Rae exploration.
Prince Gustav Channel
Prince Gustav Channel is an Antarctic strait separating James Ross and Vega Islands from Trinity Peninsula, discovered by Nordenskjöld's 1901-04 Swedish expedition, named for the later King Gustav V, and opened to navigation after its ice shelf collapsed in 1995.
Prince of Wales Strait
Prince of Wales Strait: Arctic channel between Banks and Victoria islands in Canada's Northwest Passage, discovered by Robert McClure in 1850, opening into Viscount Melville Sound; heavy multiyear ice limits transit.
Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound is a large glacial embayment of the Gulf of Alaska in south-central Alaska, near Cordova, Valdez, and Whittier, known for its tidewater glaciers, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the Barry Arm landslide-tsunami hazard.
Protector Shoal
Protector Shoal, a submarine seamount chain at 55°59'S 28°10'W, is the northernmost, most silicic volcano of the South Sandwich arc; its 1962 eruption produced a pumice raft that circumnavigated Antarctica.
Puerto Rico Trench
Puerto Rico Trench (Brownson Deep): deepest place in the Atlantic Ocean at about 8,400 m, a Caribbean-North American plate boundary trench north of Puerto Rico with Earth's most negative gravity anomaly, -380 mGal, and major tsunami hazard.
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a deep glacial fjord estuary in Washington state within the Salish Sea, the largest US estuary by volume, with two-layer exchange circulation, dissolved-oxygen impairment from nutrients, and major salmon, shellfish, and port economies.
Puget Sound region
Puget Sound region: northwestern Washington area around the glacial fjord-like estuary Puget Sound and the Salish Sea straits. 13 counties, Coast Salish tribes, 1854-56 treaties, Seattle metro GDP $487.8 billion (2023), 70-80% estuarine habitat lost.
Qiongzhou Strait
The Qiongzhou Strait (琼州海峡) is a strait in southern China separating Hainan Island from the Leizhou Peninsula and linking the Beibu Gulf to the South China Sea.
Queen Charlotte Sound
Queen Charlotte Sound: name shared by a sound between Haida Gwaii and Vancouver Island, British Columbia (named 1786 for Queen Charlotte), and Tōtaranui, a drowned-valley sound in New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds named by Cook in 1770.
Ragay Gulf
Ragay Gulf: deep triangular embayment in southeastern Luzon, Philippines, between Quezon and Camarines Sur provinces; about 3,900 km2, 600 m deep, on the Philippine Fault, a Key Biodiversity Area and major fishing ground.
Revelle Inlet
Revelle Inlet, also Revelle Bay or Revelle, Ensenada, is an ice-filled inlet on the Wilkins Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula, at about 68°40'S 63°26'W, bounded by Cape Keeler and feeding flow units of the Larsen C Ice Shelf.
Reykjanes Ridge
The Reykjanes Ridge is the roughly 900 km section of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge running from Iceland to the Bight Fracture Zone, separating the North American and Eurasian plates.
Rheic Ocean
The Rheic Ocean was a Paleozoic ocean basin between Gondwana and Laurussia, opened about 490 Ma when Avalonia rifted from Gondwana, and closed in the Devonian–Carboniferous, producing the Variscan and Alleghanian orogenies and helping assemble Pangaea.
Ria
A ria is a drowned, unglaciated river valley flooded by the sea, forming a branching rocky-coast inlet; term coined by von Richthofen (1886) from Galicia's rias, distinct from glacial fjords, found worldwide.
Ría de Vigo
The Ría de Vigo is the southernmost of Galicia's four Rías Baixas, a roughly 33 km sea inlet in Pontevedra province on Spain's Atlantic coast.
Rías Baixas
The Rías Baixas are four large, funnel-shaped coastal inlets on the western coast of Galicia, north-west Spain, whose seasonal Atlantic upwelling drives highly productive waters supporting fisheries and mussel farming.
Richard Collinson Inlet
Richard Collinson Inlet, a large shallow inlet on the north coast of Victoria Island, Nunavut, between Barnard Point and Loch Point; named for Arctic explorer Sir Richard Collinson, with ringed seals and spring polar bear habitat.
Richards Bay
Richards Bay, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: deep-water port on the Mhlatuze Lagoon, opened 1 April 1976 for coal export, home to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal and South Africa's largest port by tonnage.