877 articles
Continental shelf of Russia
The continental shelf of Russia is the seabed beyond its territorial sea in the Arctic, with about 1.7 million square kilometers recognized by the UN in 2023.
Cook Strait
Cook Strait, in Māori Raukawa Moana, is the water between New Zealand's North and South Islands, linking the Tasman Sea and the South Pacific; at 22 km wide, its waters are notoriously hazardous.
Coral Sea
The Coral Sea is a southwestern Pacific marginal sea off northeastern Australia between the Great Barrier Reef, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, defined by the South Equatorial Current, rich marine life, and the 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, the first all-carrier-aircraft naval battle.
Corner Inlet
Corner Inlet is a tide-dominated embayment in South Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, a Ramsar wetland (site 261, listed 1982, 67,071 ha) famed for migratory shorebirds, southernmost Posidonia seagrass and white mangroves.
Cortes Bank
Cortes Bank is a shallow submarine bank about 100 miles west of San Diego on the Santa Rosa-Cortes Ridge, rising to within meters of the surface at Bishop Rock, famed for big-wave surfing and studied for offshore geology.
Cumberland Bay
Cumberland Bay is the largest fjord on South Georgia, splitting into East and West Bay and sheltering Grytviken, the whaling station founded there in 1904.
Cumberland Sound
Cumberland Sound (Kangiqtualuk) is a large embayment on southeast Baffin Island, Nunavut, opening to Davis Strait. About 250 km long, a historic whaling centre visited by William Penny in 1839 and Franz Boas in 1883–84, home to Greenland halibut and a threatened beluga population.
Daito Ridge
Daito Ridge (大東海嶺), also called Daito Mountains, is a 500-km-long east-west undersea remnant island arc at the northwestern end of the Philippine Sea plate, with 13-20 km thick Cretaceous arc crust, now subducting beneath the Ryukyu Trench.
Dallmann Bay
Dallmann Bay: bay between Brabant and Anvers Islands, Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica; charted 1874 by Eduard Dallmann; Eastern Dallmann Bay is protected as ASPA 153 (520 km²).
Dampier Strait
Dampier Strait, also Selat Dampier, names two straits charted by William Dampier in 1700: one between Waigeo and Batanta in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, a strong-current diving hotspot within a 353,385-hectare marine protected area, and one between New Britain and New Guinea, Papua New Guinea.
Darbel Bay
Darbel Bay (Marin Darbel Bay) is a bay on the Loubet Coast, west Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula, at 66°30'S 65°55'W, bounded by Cape Bellue and the Darbel Islands and studied for its tidewater glaciers and seafloor moraines.
Dardanelles
Dardanelles (Çanakkale Boğazı), ancient Hellespont: Turkish strait linking the Aegean and Sea of Marmara, about 62 km long with a two-layer exchange flow, governed by the 1936 Montreux Convention and site of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign.
Darnley Bay
Darnley Bay, a roughly 45 km Arctic inlet off Amundsen Gulf, Northwest Territories, Canada, near Paulatuk; home of the Anguniaqvia Niqiqyuam Marine Protected Area, Hornaday River Arctic char, and Cape Parry seabird colonies.
Davao Gulf
Davao Gulf (Tagalook) is a gulf in southeastern Mindanao, Philippines, bounded by Davao City and the Davao Region. Over 1,200 fish species, dugongs, whale sharks; annual June-August closed season since 2014 protects small pelagic fisheries.
Davie Ridge
Davie Ridge: 1,200-km submarine ridge in the Mozambique Channel, the topographic expression of the Davie Fracture Zone transform along which Madagascar drifted south; continental crust fragments separating Somali and Mozambique basins.
Davis Sea
Davis Sea is a body of water off East Antarctica along Queen Mary Land and Wilhelm II Land, named by Douglas Mawson in 1912 for Captain John King Davis.
Davis Strait
Davis Strait is the sea passage between Baffin Island and Greenland, linking Baffin Bay to the Labrador Sea; named for John Davis (1585), it is a major Arctic gateway for freshwater and sea ice export.
Deception Pass
Deception Pass is a narrow, tide-swept strait separating Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island in Puget Sound, Washington, known for its fast tidal currents and 1935 bridges.
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Deepwater Horizon oil spill: April 20, 2010 BP rig explosion and Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 and releasing 134 million gallons of oil; largest U.S. offshore spill, $20.8 billion settlement.
Delaware Bay
Delaware Bay, the estuary of the Delaware River between Delaware and New Jersey, a large coastal plain estuary with salinity from 0.2 to 31.8 ppt, managed salt front, and the world's densest horseshoe crab spawning grounds.
Delaware Estuary
The Delaware Estuary is the tidal reach of the Delaware River, running 134 miles from Trenton, New Jersey, to the Atlantic between Cape May and Cape Henlopen.
Denmark Strait
Denmark Strait, between Greenland and Iceland, is the widest deep passage of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge. Its dense overflow (DSOW, about 3.2 Sv) feeds the AMOC's lower limb and forms the Denmark Strait cataract, an undersea cascade of about 11,500 feet.
Devil's Sea (魔の海)
The Devil's Sea (魔の海), also known as the Dragon's Triangle or Formosa Triangle, is a Pacific region south of Japan likened to the Bermuda Triangle for reported disappearances.
Discovery Bay
Discovery Bay, also called Chile Bay, is a bay on northeast Greenwich Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, site of Chile's Arturo Prat base (1947), Ecuador's Pedro Vicente Maldonado station, and the protected benthic habitat ASPA 144.
Disko Bay
Disko Bay (Qeqertarsuup Tunua) is a bay in West Greenland at 69°N, 53°W, fed by icebergs from Jakobshavn glacier, with seasonal sea ice from January to June, rich Palaeo-Eskimo archaeology, and Danish colonial towns founded 1734–1773.
Dixon Entrance
Dixon Entrance, also called the A-B Line strait, is the sea passage between southeast Alaska and Haida Gwaii, named for Captain George Dixon in 1788, site of the unresolved Canada-US maritime boundary dispute over the 1903 A-B Line.
Dmitry Laptev Strait
Dmitry Laptev Strait (пролив Дмитрия Лаптева), shallow Arctic strait connecting the Laptev and East Siberian Seas between Oyogos Yar and Bol'shoy Lyakhovsky Island; minimum depth 8 m, summer floating ice, named for explorer Dmitry Laptev.
Dogger Bank
Dogger Bank: large shallow sandbank in the southern North Sea, largest in UK waters, SAC of 12,331 km², glacial moraine origin, also a major offshore wind farm site.
Drake Passage
Drake Passage is the ~1,000 km open-ocean strait between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands, carrying the Antarctic Circumpolar Current through its three main fronts; opened in stages from ~50 to ~12 Ma, it is notorious for 60-knot winds and 10–12 m waves.
Duse Bay
Duse Bay is a bay on the south side of Trinity Peninsula, Antarctic Peninsula, between View Point and Tabarin Peninsula, discovered by the Swedish Antarctic Expedition 1901-04 and named for Lt. Samuel A. Duse.