The Barents Sea (Norwegian: Barentshavet, Russian: Баренцево море or Barentsevo More) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of Norway and Russia. Known in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea, the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barents. It is a rather deep shelf sea (average depth 760 feet (230 m) and maximum depth 1,480 feet (450 m)), bordered by the shelf edge towards the Norwegian Sea in the west, the islands of Svalbard (Norway) in the northwest, and the islands of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya (Arkhangelsk Oblast) in the northeast and east. Novaya Zemlya separates the Kara Sea from the Barents Sea. Significant fossil fuel energy resources exist in the Barents Sea region.
Read more about Barents Sea: Geography, Ecology, History, Mineral Resources
Famous quotes containing the word sea:
“In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)