Curated category
European seas
- Black SeaThe Black Sea holds a secret beneath its surface: below a certain depth, nothing breathes. Over 90% of the deeper water volume is completely anoxic, starved…
- Kara SeaThe Kara Sea freezes over for all but two months of the year, locking its waters in ice from September to May. On 16th-century maps it carried a Latin name…
- White SeaThe White Sea sits at the far northwest corner of Russia, a southern inlet of the Barents Sea ringed by Karelia, the Kola Peninsula, and the Kanin Peninsula.
- Adriatic SeaThe Adriatic Sea holds a record that most people overlook: on the 4th of November 1966, the water in Venice rose 194 cm above normal levels.
- Baltic SeaThe Baltic Sea holds a distinction that most seas never earn: it is the world's largest brackish water basin, neither fully fresh nor fully salt, caught…
- Barents SeaThe Barents Sea has a name that sailors have given it for centuries: The Devil's Dance Floor. It sits off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia, a shallow…
- Sea of AzovThe Sea of Azov holds a record that surprises almost everyone who hears it: it is the shallowest sea in the world. Its depth varies between 0.9 and 14…
- Aegean SeaThe Aegean Sea sits between two continents, a body of water roughly 215,000 square kilometres in area that has shaped the course of Western civilization.
- North SeaThe North Sea has been, at various points in history, a highway for Viking longships, a killing ground for two world wars, and a reservoir of oil that…
- Mediterranean SeaThe Mediterranean Sea holds about 2,500,000 square kilometers of water, yet that represents only 0.7% of the global ocean surface.
- English ChannelThe English Channel carries more than 500 ships a day through its waters, making it the busiest shipping lane on the planet.
- Norwegian SeaThe Norwegian Sea sits northwest of Norway in a geographic limbo, claimed by neither the Atlantic nor the Arctic Ocean but counted as part of both.
- Pechora SeaThe Pechora Sea sits at the southeastern corner of the Barents Sea, pressed against the northwestern edge of European Russia.