Barents Sea

Barents Sea Latest News

Russia recently rolled its Bastion coastal defence missile launchers onto the bleak shoreline of the Barents Sea, a dramatic opening move in the navy‑wide exercise codenamed “July Storm.”

About Barents Sea

• It is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean located along the northern coasts of Norway and Russia.
• It covers an area of 1.4 million sq.km.
• It was named for Willem Barents, a 16th-century Dutch navigator who explored it while searching for a northeast passage to Asia.
• The sea was known to Vikings and medieval Russians as the Murmean Sea.
• Boundaries:
  • It is bounded by the Svalbard archipelago in the northwest, the Franz Josef Land islands in the northeast, the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the east, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea in the west, and by the Kola Peninsula in the south. 
  • It is separated from the Kara Sea by the Kara Strait and the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. 
  • The White Sea and the Pechora Sea are two parts of the Barents Sea.
  • The White Sea is a southern arm of the Barents Sea, which separates the Kola Peninsula from the Russian mainland.
  • The Pechora Sea is situated in the southeastern part of the Barents Sea.
• The maximum width of the Barents Sea is 1,050 km, and it is about 1,300 km in length. 
• It covers a relatively shallow continental shelf fringing the Eurasian landmass. 
• It has an estimated average depth of 230 m. 
• The climate of the sea is subarctic.
• The waters of the Barents Sea have a high salinity of 34 parts per 1,000.
• The Gulf Stream keeps the Barents Sea and its adjoining coasts significantly warmer than other sub-Arctic regions.
• It has a rich biological diversity, including some of the world’s most numerous colonies of seabirds such as puffins and guillemots, rich seafloor communities with kelp forests, numerous deepwater coral reefs, and a unique variety of marine mammals such as walrus, bowhead whales, and polar bears.

Source: ET

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