Arctic Ocean

Description

In two ways this ocean is not an ocean. First, a large part of it is pack ice, not liquid water. Second it is relatively shallow, with just one linear basin, the Angara, where it reaches abysmal depths.

It surrounds the North Pole, and is north of the Canadian Archipelago, Kalaalit Nunaat¹ and the Eurasian Landmass. Its boundary with the Atlantic is not well defined but a reasonably acceptable convention is a line from northeastern Kalaalit Nunaat to the top of Spitsbergen, along the west side of that island and then down to the northern tip of Norge (Norway). The waters around the Canadian Archipelago are sometimes accorded to this ocean, but more often those east of a line from Ellesmere Island to Baffin Island to the Melville Peninsula are considered part of the Atlantic.

The boundary with the Pacific is much simpler, cutting across the Bering Strait (south of the Chukchi Sea) from Cape Dezhneva² in Chukotska,³ to Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska.

The limit of the permanently frozen waters embeds some of the bordering islands or at least their northern reaches (or did so until recent years). The top of Kalaalit Nunaat has, until recent years, always been in ice. To its east the pack ice has traditionally stayed seasonally north of various islands: the Svalbard group, Franz Josef⁴ Land,⁵ Northern⁶ Land, the New Siberian⁷ Islands,⁸ and Wrangel⁹ Island. This trend stops above North America after the ice avoids Banks Island. Only parts of Patrick Island, Melville Island, Bathhurst Island, Devon Island and Ellesmere Island were ever traditionally free of it. The northern Queen Elizabeth Islands have traditionally always been in it.

There are numerous 'seas' along the south of the ocean, better defined by the coasts they front then by any separateness northward; the most defined is the Barents Sea. Within the Canadian Archipelago are the Fury and Hecla Straits, the Gulf of Boothia, Prince Regent Inlet, Lancaster Sound, Sverdrup Channel, Norwegian Bay, Jones Sound, Amundsen Gulf, Viscount Melville Sound and numerous other bays and straits. North of Russia are the Kara Sea (including the Pechora Sea), the Laptev Sea, the East Siberian Sea and (partly above Alaska) the Chukchi Sea.

The only major Arctic Ocean islands not already mentioned are New¹⁰ Land and some of the southern islands of the Canadian Archipelago, most notably Victoria Island.

Around the Area

south of the Chukchi Plateau
south of the center of the Beaufort Sea
south of the waters southwest from the Wandel Sea to to east of the eastern Amundsen Gulf of the Beaufort Sea
southwest of southwest end of the Nansen Basin
south of the southwest end of the Nansen Basin
south of the west center of the Nansen Basin
south of the east center of the Nansen Basin
southwest of the St. Anna Trough
southeast of the St. Anna Trough
west of the Kara Sea
southeast of the Nansen Basin and west of the Laptev Sea
south of the Laptev Sea and the western East Siberian Sea
south of the eastern East Siberian Sea

Footnotes

1. Greenland in English.
2. Or Dežneva.
3. Or Čukotska.
4. Or Frantsa Iosifa
5. Zemlya or zemlja in Russian.
6. Severnaya in Russian.
7. Novosibirskiy'e in Russian.
8. Ostrova in Russian.
9. Vrangelya in Russian.
10. Novaya in Russian.