Curated playlist
Seas of Russia
- 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 of oxygen, and it has been that way for a very long time. That dead zone is why…
- 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, Oceanus Scythicus, and elsewhere Mare Glaciale, the icy sea. For three centuries…
- East Siberian SeaThe East Siberian Sea sits at the top of the world, a vast stretch of Arctic water pressed between the coast of Siberia to the south and the open Arctic Ocean to the north. Its name was only officially fixed on the 27th of June 1935, by…
- 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. It is one of only four seas in the world named after a colour - sharing that…
- Sea of OkhotskThe Sea of Okhotsk sits at the northwestern edge of the Pacific Ocean, pressed between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Japan's island of Hokkaido, and a long ribbon of eastern Siberian coastline. Its name traces back to a…
- 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 between two states of being in a way that shapes everything that lives in it, trades…
- 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 shelf sea averaging just 230 metres deep, yet it holds within it one of the most…
- 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 metres, shallower in many places than a backyard swimming pool. Connected to the Black…
- Sea of JapanThe Sea of Japan sits in near-total isolation from the Pacific Ocean, enclosed by the Japanese archipelago, the Korean Peninsula, Sakhalin, and the Russian Far East. That enclosure shapes almost everything about it: the salinity is lower…
- Laptev SeaThe Laptev Sea sits at the northern edge of Siberia, frozen for most of the year and clear of ice for perhaps two months out of twelve. Temperatures here drop as low as -50 degrees Celsius, and in the north, the sun disappears entirely for…
- Chukchi SeaThe Chukchi Sea sits at the top of the world, wedged between Russia and Alaska, where the Pacific Ocean finally meets the Arctic. Its southernmost boundary is the Bering Strait, one of the most consequential stretches of water on earth.…
- Bering SeaThe Bering Sea sits at the edge of two worlds. It is the body of water that divides the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and the Americas. On the 18th of December 2018, a meteor the size of a small building exploded above it at an…
- Pechora SeaThe Pechora Sea sits at the southeastern corner of the Barents Sea, pressed against the northwestern edge of European Russia. It is ringed by Kolguyev Island to the west, Vaygach Island and the Yugorsky Peninsula to the east, and the…