877 articles
Trail Inlet
Trail Inlet is an ice-filled inlet at 68°05'S 65°22'W on the Bowman Coast, Graham Land, feeding a flow unit of the Larsen C Ice Shelf; Joerg Peninsula divides it from Solberg Inlet, and its 1,068 km² catchment drains via Daspit Glacier.
Transatlantic crossing
Transatlantic crossing: ocean or air voyage between Europe and the Americas. Norse crossed by AD 1021; steam cut weeks to days (SS United States record 3d 10h 40m, 1952); jets made it hours.
Transit passage
Transit passage is the UNCLOS Part III regime letting all ships and aircraft pass unimpeded through straits used for international navigation, including submerged submarines and overflight, subject to limited coastal regulation; distinct from innocent passage and archipelagic sea lanes passage.
Transitional waters
Transitional waters: WFD-defined surface waters near river mouths, partly saline but freshwater-influenced (estuaries, coastal lagoons, brackish ponds). Assessed via biological quality elements under the EU Water Framework Directive.
Triangular trade
Triangular trade: the 16th-19th century Atlantic circuit linking Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, in which manufactured goods were traded for enslaved Africans carried via the Middle Passage, and colonial commodities like sugar returned to Europe.
Troll A platform
Troll A is a Condeep concrete gravity-based natural gas platform in the Troll field, North Sea off Norway. At 472 m tall and ~683,600 tonnes unballasted, it is the tallest structure ever moved by humans and the first NCS platform powered from shore.
Tsugaru Strait
Tsugaru Strait (津軽海峡), strait between Honshu and Hokkaido connecting the Sea of Japan and Pacific; carries the Tsugaru Warm Current (~1.5 Sv) and the 53.85 km Seikan Tunnel.
Turkish straits crisis
Turkish straits crisis: 1945–1946 Soviet-Turkish confrontation over the Montreux Convention, Soviet bases on the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and Kars-Ardahan territory; Turkey refused, the US backed it, leading toward NATO membership in 1952.
Turnagain Arm
Turnagain Arm is a 48-mile hypertidal estuary of Cook Inlet southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, named by Captain Cook in 1778, with a 9 m tidal range, a daily tidal bore, and tidal flats studied for earthquake-like sediment deformation.
Tuzla Island
Tuzla Island is a narrow sandy island in the middle of the Kerch Strait between Crimea and the Taman Peninsula, focus of a 2003 Ukraine–Russia crisis and later the Kerch Bridge.
Tyrrhenian Basin
Tyrrhenian Basin: the young back-arc basin of the Mediterranean between Italy, Corsica-Sardinia, and Sicily, formed by Ionian slab rollback since about 10 Ma, with Vavilov and Marsili oceanic sub-basins reaching 3,600 m depth.
Tyrrhenian Sea
Tyrrhenian Sea (Mare Tirreno, Mare Tyrrhenum): arm of the Mediterranean between Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily; deepest western Mediterranean basin (~3,900 m), a young back-arc basin opened by slab rollback since ~10 Ma, with Vavilov and Marsili oceanic sub-basins, Aeolian volcanism, and major ports at Naples and Civitavecchia.
Uchiura Bay
Uchiura Bay (内浦湾), also Funka Bay or Volcano Bay, is a roughly circular bay about 50 km across on Hokkaido's Oshima Peninsula, named in 1796 by Captain Broughton; fisheries, scallop aquaculture, and volcanic hazards define it.
Uda Gulf
Uda Gulf (Удская губа, Udskaya Bay), a bay in the western Sea of Okhotsk, Khabarovsk Krai, Russia; about 100 km long, 36 m deep, macrotidal (tides to 9.7 m), receiving the Uda River, ice-bound October to June, with Shantar Islands at its entrance.
Upernavik Archipelago straits and bays
The straits and bays of the Upernavik Archipelago are the channels and inlets separating thousands of islands in northwest Greenland, centered on the deep Upernavik Isfjord.
Uummannaq fjord system bays and inlets
The Uummannaq fjord system bays and inlets, officially Uummannaq Fjord, are the arms of a large fjord complex in Greenland draining the ice sheet into Baffin Bay.
Vahsel Bay
Vahsel Bay (Vahselbucht), a bay about 7 miles wide on the Luitpold Coast, Coats Land, Antarctica, at the east end of the Filchner Ice Shelf; discovered 1912 by Filchner's German expedition and named for Captain Richard Vahsel.
Valencia Basin
Valencia Basin (Valencia Trough), western Mediterranean basin between Iberia and the Balearic Islands; late Oligocene-Neogene aborted rift with crust thinned to about 9 km, formed by slab roll-back.
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s–1524), Portuguese navigator born in Sines, commanded the first European fleet to reach India by sea around Africa (1497–1499), landing at Calicut in 1498; later Admiral of the Indian seas under Manuel I.
Vema Fracture Zone
Vema Fracture Zone: major west-east central Atlantic fracture zone at ~10°50′N, intraplate trace of the Vema Transform offsetting the Mid-Atlantic Ridge ~320 km left-laterally, with a >5,100 m deep sedimented valley, median ridge, and 300-km transverse ridge.
Vestfjorden
Vestfjorden, a broad open bay in Nordland, Norway, between Lofoten and the mainland; skrei cod spawning ground, site of the Lofoten fishery, ~180 km long, sill 227 m.
Victoria Harbour (维多利亚港)
Victoria Harbour (维多利亚港) is the sheltered deep-water harbour between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Key facts: 180 years of reclamation creating 7,051 hectares, 1997 Protection of the Harbour Ordinance, 2004 court test, world-busiest port in 1994.
Vilkitsky Strait
Vilkitsky Strait (пролив Вилькицкого), Arctic strait between Cape Chelyuskin and Bolshevik Island connecting the Kara and Laptev Seas; the northernmost, most difficult chokepoint of the Northern Sea Route, requiring icebreaker escort.
Vincennes Bay
Vincennes Bay is an ice-filled bay on Budd Coast, Wilkes Land, East Antarctica, named for the USS Vincennes of the 1840 Wilkes expedition. Its Vanderford Glacier drains part of the Aurora Subglacial Basin, holds about 0.67 m of sea level rise, and receives warm modified Circumpolar Deep Water intrusions.
Violante Inlet
Violante Inlet is an ice-filled inlet, 16 nmi long and 12–15 nmi wide, between Cape Fanning and Cape Herdman on the Black Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctica; discovered by USAS in 1940 and named for Andre L. Violante.
Visayan Sea
Visayan Sea: shallow inland sea (5,184 km², max depth 150 m) in the central Philippines bounded by Masbate, Cebu, Negros, and Panay; major sardine, herring, and mackerel fishing ground with a November 15 to February 15 closed season under FAO 167.
Viscount Melville Sound
Viscount Melville Sound, Arctic Ocean arm in Canada's Northwest Passage, 402 km long between Victoria, Prince of Wales, Melville, and Bathurst islands; part of Parry Channel, explored by McClure 1850–53.
Voyage of the James Caird
Voyage of the James Caird: 1916 open-boat journey by Ernest Shackleton and five companions about 800 miles from Elephant Island to South Georgia, rescuing the Endurance expedition; boat now at Dulwich College.
Voyages of Christopher Columbus
The voyages of Christopher Columbus: four transatlantic expeditions, 1492–1504, sponsored by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, reaching the Caribbean while seeking Asia; they began permanent contact between Europe and the Americas.
Voyages of James Cook
The voyages of James Cook were three British expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1780, charting New Zealand, eastern Australia, and Antarctic waters.