Sea of Okhotsk
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Map of the Sea of Okhotsk. |
The
Sea of Okhotsk (
Russian: Охо́тское мо́ре;
English Transliteration: Okhotskoye More) (named after
Okhotsk, the first
Russian settlement in the
Russian Far East) is a part of the western
Pacific Ocean, lying between the
Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the
Kuril Islands on the southeast, the
island of
Hokkaido to the far south, the island of
Sakhalin along the west, and a long stretch of eastern
Siberian coast along the west and north. Russian explorers
Ivan Moskvitin and
Vassili Poyarkov were the firsth Europeans to discover the Sea of Okhotsk in the second quarter of the
17th century.
The Sea of Okhotsk is connected to the
Sea of Japan on either side of Sakhalin: on the west through the
Sakhalin Gulf and the
Gulf of Tartary; on the south, through the
La Pérouse Strait.
In
winter, navigation on the Sea of Okhotsk becomes difficult, or even impossible, due to the formation of large
ice floes, because the large amount of freshwater from the
Amur lowers the
salinity and raises the
freezing point of the sea. The distribution and thickness of ice floes depends on many factors: the location, the time of year, water currents, and the sea temperatures.
With the exception of Hokkaido, one of the
Japanese
Home Islands, the sea is surrounded on all sides by territory administered by the Russian Federation. For this reason, it is generally considered as being under Russian sovereignty. During the
Cold War, the
Soviet Pacific Fleet used the Sea as a ballistic missile submarine
bastion, a strategy that
Russia continues.
In the
Japanese language, the sea was traditionally called
Hokkai (北海), meaning 'north sea'. However, because this term is now used to refer to the
North Sea in
Europe, the name has changed to
Ohōtsuku-kai (オホーツク海), a transliteration of the Russian name.
*
Abashiri,
Hokkaido,
Japan*
Magadan,
Magadan,
Russia*
Monbetsu,
Hokkaido,
Japan*
Palana,
Kamchatka,
Russia*
Wakkanai,
Hokkaido,
Japan*
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk,
Sakhalin,
Russia
