North Sea
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
The North Sea is a sea in northern Europe. It is part of the Atlantic ocean. The North Sea is between Norway and Denmark in the east, Scotland and England in the west, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in the south.
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[edit] Borders
The Skagerrak connects the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. In the south, the North Sea becomes the English Channel, a sea between England and France. This is called the Straight of Dover and is very busy with ships.
The border between the North Sea and the Skagerrak is at an imagined line between Lindesnes in Norway, and Halsthom in Denmark. In the North, the North sea is open towards the Atlantic. The border between the two is an imagined line from Northern Scotland, to the Shetlands, and then to Ålesund in Norway. According to the Oslo-Paris Treaty of 1962 it is a bit more to the west and the north though. The treaty puts it at 5° western longitude, and 22° northern latitude. That is at the height of the Geirangerfjord in Norway.
[edit] Various statistical data
On average, the North Sea has a depth of only 94 metres. About 80 million people live near the North Sea, at most 150km way from the coast. Together with the English Channel in the south, the southern North Sea is the busiest body of water in the world. The most ships pass through it.
[edit] Rivers that drain into it
Well-known rivers that drain into the North Sea include the Forth (at Edinburgh),The Tyne(Newcastle), the Elbe (at Cuxhaven), the Weser (at Bremerhaven), the Ems at Emden, the Rhine and Meuse (at Rotterdam), the Scheldt (at Flushing), the Thames, and the Humber (at Hull).
The Kiel Canal, one of the world's busiest artificial waterways, connects the North Sea with the Baltic.
[edit] Naming
Its name comes from its relationship to the land of the Frisians (see Frisia). They live directly to the south of the North Sea, and to the west of the East Sea (Oostzee, the Baltic Sea), the former South Sea (Zuiderzee, today's IJsselmeer) and the today reclaimed Middle Sea (Middelzee). But the spread of the naming could also be from the view of the cities of the Hanseatic League. Someme of its main cities, like Lübeck, Bremen or Hamburg had basically the same view.
In classical times this body of water was also referred to as the Oceanum- or Mare Germanicum, meaning German Ocean or Sea. This name was commonly used in English and other languages along with the name North Sea, until the early eighteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, German Sea was a rare, scholarly usage even in Germany. In Danish the North Sea is also named Vesterhavet (besides Nordsøen), meaning Western Ocean as it is located west of Denmark.
[edit] Geographic divisions
Most of the North sea lies on the European Continental shelf. On average, the depth is about 93 to 94 meters only. In the south it is very shallow, only 25 to 35 meters. In the norrth in the bathyal zone north of the Shetlands, this depth increases to between 100 and 200 metres. In the south, the depth is at most 50 metres. An exception to this is the Norwegian Trench. At its deepest point there, the North Sea has a depth of 725 metres. The most shallow part of it is a sand bank called Doggerbank. In the southern part, there are many sand banks.
Looking at the sattelite picture it is easy to see the geographic divisions of the North Sea:
- There is a generally shallow southern North Sea
- There is the central North Sea
- There is the northern North Sea, with the Norwegian Trench, near the Skagerrak.
The southern north sea is composed of the Southern Bight, before the coast of Belgium and the Netherlands and the German Bight before the coastline of Germany. The doggerbank is the limit between the southern and central parts. The Wadden Sea runs all the way from Den Helder in the Netherlands to Esbjerg in Denmark.
The Doggerbank covers an area which is about half the size of the Netherlands. There, the North Sea has a depth of between 13 and 20 metres only. The area is very famous for fishing. With some storms there are even waves breaking there.
The Norwegian Trench has an average depth of around 250 to 300 metres, at the border to the Skagerrak, the depth increases up to 725 meters. Along the trech there is the Norwegian Current, which brings most of the waters of the Norh Sea into the Atlantic ocean. Also, most of the waters of the Baltic Sea flow northwards here.
Near the Scottish town of Dundee there are more trenches, known as Devil's hole. Generally, the water is about 90 meters deep there. The trenches very often are only a few kilometers in length. In these trenches, the depth increases to up to 230 meters.
In the Straight of Dover the water is about 30 meters deep. At the end of the English Channel, this depth increases ot about 100 meters.
[edit] History
In the last ice age the North Sea was covered by large areas of ice called glaciers. About 20,000 years ago the ice melted and the North Sea was formed (made).
[edit] North Sea oil
In the 1960s earth scientists found large areas of natural gas and oil under the North Sea. Most of the oil fields are owned by the United Kingdom and Norway but some belong to Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. Drilling began in the 1980s and led to a famous argument between England and Scotland about how the revenue (money) from the oil should be spent.
[edit] Animal life
People have been fishing in the North Sea for thousands of years. However, so many fish are now caught there that new ones may not be able to grow fast enough to keep the fishery going.
Terns, Atlantic puffins, razorbills, kittiwakes and other seabirds live on the North Sea coast. Many coastal areas are protected nature reserves.
