877 articles
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.
Schollaert Channel
Schollaert Channel: Antarctic channel in the Palmer Archipelago between Anvers and Brabant Islands, connecting Dallmann Bay and Gerlache Strait; discovered 1898 by de Gerlache's Belgian expedition, named for statesman François Schollaert.
Scoresby Sound
Scoresby Sound (Kangertittivaq, Scoresby Sund), East Greenland's vast fjord system: world's largest, ~350 km long, 13,700 km², named by William Scoresby Jr. in 1822, with Ittoqqortoormiit its only town.
Sea
A sea is a large saltwater body smaller than an ocean, usually at the land-ocean margin and partially enclosed by land; the Sargasso Sea, defined only by currents, is the exception. Covers tides, currents, waves, climate role, and human use.
Sea ice in the Pacific Ocean
Sea ice in the Pacific Ocean forms at its polar margins: the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Pacific edge of the Antarctic pack.
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.
Seachannel
A seachannel is an elongated depression on the seabed with a continuously sloping bottom, typically occurring on fans or plains and often flanked by levees.
Seafloor features of the Indian Ocean
The seafloor of the Indian Ocean features an inverted-Y spreading ridge system, the 5,600 km Ninetyeast Ridge, and a deepest point of 7,450 m in the Java Trench.
Seafloor features of the polar oceans
The seafloor features of the polar oceans are the named ridges, basins, plains, and shelves of the Arctic and Southern oceans, whose floors differ sharply from temperate oceans.
Seamount
A seamount, also called an undersea mountain, is an extinct volcano rising at least 1,000 meters from the ocean floor without reaching the surface; flat-topped ones are guyots.
Second Bay
Second Bay: name shared by a bay on Ponui Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand (36°53.843′S, 175°12.054′E, a fisheries boundary point), a Coolum Beach reserve in Queensland, a bay in Ontario, Canada, and a bay in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
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.
Seizure of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs
The seizure of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs was Iran's landing on three Persian Gulf islands on 30 November 1971, claimed by the UAE ever since.
Seligman Inlet
Seligman Inlet is an ice-filled inlet on the east coast of Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula, opening into the Larsen Ice Shelf. Its 972 km² catchment basin drains glaciers from the peninsula's mountain ridge.
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.
Seno Skyring
Seno Skyring, also called Skyring Sound, is a large semi-enclosed inland sea of about 1,500 km² in Chile's Magallanes region, north of Riesco Island and the Strait of Magellan, discovered by Captain FitzRoy in 1829.
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.
Severn Estuary
Severn Estuary (Môr Hafren): funnel-shaped estuary between Wales and England with the world's second-largest tidal range (14 m), a Ramsar site, SPA and SAC supporting 74,000 wintering birds and over 110 fish species.
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.
Seymour Narrows
Seymour Narrows, the narrowest part of Discovery Passage, British Columbia, is a tidal bottleneck with currents up to 16 knots. Its underwater hazard Ripple Rock, which sank over 100 ships, was destroyed in the 1958 Ripple Rock explosion.
Shark Bay
Shark Bay (Gathaagudu), Western Australia: a 2.2-million-hectare World Heritage embayment with the world's largest seagrass beds, about 11,000 dugongs, Hamelin Pool stromatolites, and Dirk Hartog's 1616 landing site.
Shatsky Rise
Shatsky Rise is a large oceanic plateau and large igneous province ~1,300 km east of Japan, formed at a spreading ridge triple junction in the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous; Tamu, Ori, and Shirshov massifs; plume–ridge interaction origin.
Shelf edge
Shelf edge (shelf break): the line of marked gradient increase at the seaward margin of a continental or island shelf, conventionally at 183-200 m depth but ranging 50-550 m, controlled by tectonics, sediment supply, and sea level.
Shelf valley
A shelf valley is a valley incised into the continental shelf floor, cut by rivers when sea level fell, often extending an existing river and feeding submarine canyons.