Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Sea, or they may be “open” to the ocean, as is the Arabian Sea. A
gulf
is a part of an ocean or sea
that extends into the land. Dictionaries suggest that gulfs are smaller than seas but bigger than bays.
A bay may be defined as an inlet of a sea or gulf. For example, Tampa Bay is an inlet of the Gulf of
Mexico.
That's by the topic, of course. In reality, things aren't so neat and tidy. Con-sidering the Indian
Ocean and parts thereof (see Figure 8-2), for example, you can see that the Bay of Bengal is
bigger than the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Oman. When it comes to these place-names, it's
kind of like being told “size matters” and then finding out it doesn't. Basically, what happened
is that, way back when, some explorer ormapmaker simply labeled a water bodyand the name
stuck. Maybe that person didn't appreciate the true size of the feature being named or didn't
appreciate the nuances of vocabulary. Whatever the case, the result is a dictionary that sug-
gests a definite rank order with respect to size of seas, gulfs, and bays, and a world map that
says it ain't necessarily so.
Figure 8-2:
The
Indian Ocean
and parts there-
of.
Why are the oceans salty?
Dissolved mineral salt is the key. As water flows to the seas, it comes into contact with
lots of rock and rock particles. These contain mineral salts, minute quantities of which
are dissolved and carried along by running water. It's probably in the stuff you drink, but
because the salt content is so low, you don't notice anything peculiar.
Ultimately, that water with its low salt content joins the sea. The sun continually evapor-
ates sea water, producing vapor that becomes future rainfall. But here's the punchline:
It's the ocean water that gets evaporated and not its salt content. So during evaporation,
the salt gets left behind, only to have “new salt” added to it as freshwater eternally runs to
