Зачастую в различных тестовых заданиях или даже Crossword meets the following task: “the part of the ocean that reaches the land is ...” Most often the answer to this question is the “sea”. But is it really? Before answering this question, let us consider what parts the ocean consists of.
World Ocean
All the water that covers most of the land,called the oceans, the largest components of which are the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Their total area is just over 361 million square kilometers. There are practically no visible lines that would divide the oceans among themselves. Therefore, the division was made quite arbitrarily along the coastline, bottom relief, current systems, and water distribution features.
Seas
The part of the ocean that reaches the land, thoughslightly (in most cases) is called the sea. Practically all of them are distinguished by islands, surface elevations, and so on. The only sea that has no coast is the Sargasso Sea, this is a part of the ocean that is not limited by land on either side. Sea area is about 10% of the oceans. The largest in terms of area is the Philippine.
From the open part of the ocean, the sea is unique.the hydrological regime and some other features resulting from a kind of isolation, significant land impact and slow currents.
Seas are divided by location into marginal,located on the border of land with the sea, internal, located inside the continents, and inter-island, located in a ring or some, sometimes conditional, fencing from a group of islands.
Sea basins can be continental andoceanic, differing way of occurrence of depressions and, accordingly, depth. So, the mainland arose as a result of increasing water in the ocean from melted glaciers. Oceanic are formed in places of fractures of the crust. Basically, these are inter-continental seas, with rather symmetrical hollows.
The coastline of the seas is often uneven, with various curves and peninsulas. Along the coast there may be islands separated by straits.
The gulfs
This is the part of the ocean that reaches deep enough into the land. Isolated from the oceans slightly. Can be divided into types:
- The fjords. These are long and narrow bays that have significant depth and steep banks. They lie in the highlands. Most often formed in places of tectonic faults.
- Firms. These are small bays formed at the mouths of rivers, flooded by the sea.
- Lagoons. Located along the coast, separated from it by braids.
Sometimes bays are divided by size. The champion in size is the Bay of Bengal. Its depth is 4519 meters, and the area is 2191 thousand square kilometers.
There are cases when similar in size and sizeponds are called differently. For example, the Bay of Bengal has a similar area with the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea is close in size with the Persian Gulf. The point here is that these objects were named back in ancient times, when there were no clear definitions. Giving new names to such large geographical objects has no meaning.
The straits
The part of the ocean that penetrates the land deeply enough. It has a relatively small width, separates land areas or connects water bodies.
The straits are divided into narrow and wide, long andshort, deep and long. Also, there are flow channels and exchange. In flow-through flow is always in one direction. Exchange also surprise a different flow from opposite shores or at different levels of depth.
So the way the part of the ocean is called,need to be considered in each case, bearing in mind other signs, except that it goes into the land. After all, as we have already understood, most of the parts of the ocean go into the land, although some of them are more, some less.
