Amazon River - Mouth

Mouth

The definition of where exactly the mouth of the Amazon is located, and how wide it is, is a matter of dispute, because of the area's peculiar geography. The Pará and the Amazon are connected by a series of river channels called furos near the town of Breves; between them lies Marajó, an island almost the size of Switzerland that is the world's largest combined river/sea island compared to any where else in the world.

If the Pará river and the Marajó island ocean frontage are included, the Amazon estuary is some 325 kilometres (202 mi) wide. In this case, the width of the mouth of the river is usually measured from Cabo Norte, in the Brazilian state of Amapá, to Ponta da Tijoca near the town of Curuçá, in the state of Pará. By this criterion, the Amazon is wider at its mouth than the entire length of the River Thames in England.

A more conservative measurement excluding the Pará river estuary, from the mouth of the Araguari River to Ponta do Navio on the northern coast of Marajó, would still give the mouth of the Amazon a width of over 180 kilometres (110 mi). If only the river's main channel is considered, between the islands of Curuá (state of Amapá) and Jurupari (state of Pará), the width falls to about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi).