Atlantic Ocean

Description

The Atlantic Ocean covers over 82 million square kilometers. It is s-shaped and narrower in the north than the south. To the north is the Arctic Ocean, east Eurasia and Africa, south Antarctica¹ and west the Americas. So long as one includes the Greenland Sea then the northern bound is reasonably defined as from northeast Greenland² to northwest Spitsbergen and from the south tip of that island to North Cape, Norway³, via Bear Island. To the northwest geographers again vary on which ocean to assign the waters around the Canadian Archipelago. They are sometimes entirely accorded to Arctic, but more often those east of a line from Ellesmere Island to Baffin Island to the Melville Peninsula are considered part of the Atlantic. This makes the waters west of Greenland, as well as the breaks in this line, alternate connections between the two oceans.

It is separated from the Indian Ocean by a line from the southernmost tip of South Africa to Antarctica. (The Suez Canal through Egypt also connects them but deep draft vessels cannot use it.) And it is separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Drake Passage, lying between Tierra Fuego island at the bottom of South America and the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica. An alternate connection is north of the island--the Straits of Magellan. A man made connection was added in the 20th century near the southern end of North America--the Panama Canal.

Major side bodies of this ocean are the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Strait of Belle Isle, the Cabot Strait, Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Foxe Channel, Hudson Strait, Robeson_Channel, Nares Strait, Smith_Sound, Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, Labrador Sea, Greenland Sea, Denmark Strait, Norwegian Sea, North Sea, Skagerrak, Kattegat, Great Belt⁴, Little Belt⁵, The Sound⁶, Baltic Sea, English Channel⁷, Strait of Dover⁸, Strait of Gibraltar, Mediterranean Sea, Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara, Bosporus, Black Sea, Gulf of Guinea, Weddell Sea, Scotia Sea, Drake Passage, Strait of Yucatan, Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Straits of Florida. The Sargasso Sea is not a true sea, but an area east of the Caribbean Islands and west of the Azores where currents are sluggish and there is much surface seaweed.

Along most of the center of the ocean's bottom is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, starting at Iceland and turning eastward southwest of South Africa to become the Atlantic-Indian Ridge which continues into the Indian Ocean. Perpendicular to it are numerous west-east fracture zones. About it are basins, quite deep, although the deepest depth is found in a trench north of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. The Irmington Basin lies off of Southeast Greenland, south of the Greenland-Iceland Rise. The Iceland Basin lies south of Iceland and southwest of the Iceland-Faeroes Rise. To its east and southeast are numerous banks fringing the British Islands; the Rockall Trough lies between two of these higher spots. West of Europe is the Northeast Atlantic Basin, bounded southward by the Azores and the Azores-Cape St. Vincent Ridge; the ridge includes the Horseshoe Seamounts. Within it are several abyssal plains: the Porcupine, the Biscay, the Iberian, and the Tagus. To its northeast, facing Ireland and Brittany⁹, is the broad Celtic Shelf. Southeast of Newfoundland, beyond the Grand Banks, is the Newfoundland Basin. Beyond its southwest edge at the Newfoundland Rise is the North American Basin. This contains three punctuations: the Nares deep, the Bermuda Rise and the New England Seamounts. Its western edge is interrupted by the Oceanographer, Hudson and Hatteras Canyons and curtailed westward by the Georges Bank, Blake Plateau and Grand Bahama Banks. Southwest of the Northeast Atlantic Basin is the Canary Basin, roughly bounded to the south by a line from the Cape Verde Rise to the Great Meteor Seamount. Its features include the Seine and Madeira Abyssal Plains and the Agadir Canyon which runs northwest of its namesake city. South of it is the Cape Verde Basin or Abyssal Plain, whose southeast ends at the Sierra Leone Rise. Southwest of that basin, and southeast of the North American Basin is the Guiana Basin. Its northwest is at the Barracuda Rise and its southeast at a line between Fernando do Naronha and St. Paul Rocks; it contains the Demerara and Ceara Abyssal Plains, the Guiana Plateau and the Amazon Cone. Southeast of the Cape Verde Basin are the small Sierra Leone and Guinea Basins and the large Angola Basin. The only features of note in the last are the Congo Cone, and--at its southern edge--the Walvis Ridge. West of the Angola Basin--beyond the central ridge--is the Brazil Basin which extends southward to Santos Plateau and the Rio Grande Rise. It is almost divided in two by highlands that start at the Abrolhos Bank and end at Martin Vaz and Trinidade Islands. Southeast of the Walvis Ridge is the Cape Basin which contains the Namibia and Cape Abyssal Plains and the Orange Cone; it ends southeastward at the Agulhas Ridge and south at the Atlantic-Indian Ridge. Southwest of the Rio Grand Rise is the Argentine Basin. The Scotia Sea to its south is bounded by a 'c' of islands and subterranean highlands--Burdwood Bank, Scotia Ridge, South Georgia Islands, South Sandwich Islands, Scotia Ridge and the South Orkney Islands. East of the South Sandwhich Islands is a trench, and beyond that the Atlantic-Indian Antarctic Basin. This basin is south of the Atlantic-Indian Ridge and northeast of the Weddell Sea, and continues into the Indian Ocean.

Large Atlantic islands not entirely within the Mediterranean or Weddell Seas are Great Britain¹⁰, Iceland¹¹, Ireland¹², Cuba¹³, Newfoundland¹⁴ and Hispaniola¹⁵. Greenland¹⁶, Baffin¹⁷ and Ellesmere¹⁸ are along the Atlantic's edges.

Currents flow clockwise in the north--most famously the warm Gulf Stream¹⁹--and counterclockwise in the south.

There are numerous oil and gas fields in the side bodies (see the pages for those seas for a list) and some in the main part of the Atlantic (or in seas not separately described), such as Clair Oil Field, west of the Shetland Islands, Corrib Gas Field, northwest of Ireland, Kinsale Head Gas Field, in the Celtic Sea; Sugar Loaf (oil) Field and several oil and gas fields in the Santos Basin, both off of São Paulo; Jupiter (oil and gas) Field and several oil and gas fields in the Campos Basin, both off of Rio de Janeiro; Kudu Gas Field, 170 kilometers northwest of the mouth of the Orange (Oranje) River and Dalia Oil Field off of Cabinda (Angola).

Around the ocean

north, within the ocean, south of the Greenland-Iceland Rise
north, within the ocean, southeast of the Greenland-Iceland Rise
northeast, within the ocean, southwest of the Iceland-Faeroe Rise
northeast, within the ocean, east of the Rockall Trough and Porcupine Bank
within the ocean, east of the Celtic Shelf
east of the Biscay Abyssal Plain
east of the Iberian Abyssal Plain
within the ocean, east-southeast of the Horseshoe Seamounts
east of the Seine Abyssal Plain
east of the Agadir Canyon
east of the Cape Verde Abyssal Plain
east-northeast of the Cape Verde Plateau
east-southeast of the Cape Verde Plateau
northeast of the Sierra Leone Rise
northeast of the Sierra Leone Basin
within the ocean, north and east of the Guinea Basin
east and southeast of the Gulf of Guinea
northeast of the Congo Cone
east of the Congo Cone
east of the north central Angola Basin
east of the center of the Angola Basin
northeast of the Namibia Abyssal Plain
east of the Orange Cone
east of the southern South Atlantic Ocean
south, between five and 20 degrees east
south, west of five degrees east
southwest of the Atlantic-Antarctic Basin
south of the Scotia Ridge and west of the South Sandwich Trench
southwest of the Burdwood Bank
west of the Burdwood Bank
northwest of the Burdwood Bank
west of the Argentine Basin
west of the Argentine Rise
northwest of the Argentine Basin
west of the Rio Grande Rise
north of the Santos Plateau
northwest of the Abrolhos Bank
west-northwest of the center of the Brazil Basin
southwest of the St. Paul Fracture Zone
south southwest of the center of the Ceara Abyssal Plain
southwest of the center of the Ceara Abyssal Plain
southwest of the Amazon Cone
south of the Guiana Plateau
west of the Guiana Plateau
south-southwest of the Barracuda Ridge
within the ocean, west-northwest of the Demerara Abyssal Plain
southwest of the Nares Abyssal Plain
west of the Grand Bahama Bank
southwest of the Blake Plateau
west of the Blake Plateau
west and southwest of the Hatteras Canyon
northwest of the Hatteras Canyon
west-northwest of the Hudson Canyon
northwest of Hudson and Oceanographer Canyons
west of the southern Grand Banks
west and northwest of the northern Grand Banks
west of the Charlie Gibbs Fracture Zone
southwest of Hamilton Bank
north-northwest, within the ocean
northwest from the Irminger Basin

Other broad topics

the Earth

Footnotes

(1) Some geographers interpose a latitudinally defined Southern Ocean between the Atlantic and the southern continent.
(2) Or Kalaalit Nunaat.
(3) Norge in Norwegian.
(4) Lillebælt in Danish.
(5) Storebælt in Danish.
(6) Øresund in Danish.
(7) Or La Manche, that is, the Channel, in French.
(8) Or Pas de (Strait of) Calais in French.
(9) Bretagne in French.
(10) Great Britain is the world's eighth largest island.
(11) Ireland is Europe's second largest island.
(12) Iceland is Europe's third largest island.
(13) Cuba is North America's fifth largest island.
(14) Newfoundland is North America's sixth largest island.
(15) Hispaniola is North America's seventh largest island.
(16) Greenland is the world's largest island.
(17) Baffin is the world's sixth largest island.
(18) Ellesmere is the world's ninth largest island.
(19) Also called the North Atlantic Drift.