What is the sea like? Classifications of the seas

There are 63 seas on the globe. They can not be classified as Caspian and Aral (these are huge, but still lakes are the "descendants" of the ancient Tethys ocean), and also the Galilean and the Dead (the "sea" is a historical addition here). What is the sea like? This question was answered by the classification of scientists AM Muromtsev, Yu. M. Shokalsky, AV Everling, Krümmel, NN Zubov. In the article we give the most widespread categories of the seas.

What is the sea: the classification of the oceans

The most famous classification is the one that distributes the seas as belonging to the basin of a particular ocean. Proceeding from it, it is possible to distinguish 5 varieties of these reservoirs:

1. Pacific - 25 seas, among them Bering, Yellow, Japanese, Philippine, Tasman, Fiji, Okhotsk, East China, and others.
2. Atlantic - 16 seas, including the Baltic, the Azov, the Caribbean, the North, the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black, and others.
3. Indian Ocean - 11 seas, among which are Arabian, Red, Timor, and others.
4. The northern-Arctic - 11 seas, including the Barents, East Siberian, Pechora, Laptev, Kara, Chukchi and others.
5. The South Pacific - the Antarctic Sea: Amundsen, Bellingshausen, the Commonwealth, the Cosmonauts, and others.

What are the seas: names for isolation from the ocean

There are four large groups in this category:

1. Mezhostrovnye - located in a dense ring of islands that interfere with active water exchange with the ocean: Sulawesi, Yavanskoe and others.
2. Intercontinental (inland) - surrounded by land so that communicate with the ocean only a few straits: the Red, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, etc.
3. Outskirts - freely communicating with the vastness of the ocean, the currents in them form also due to its winds. The ocean also affects the nature of their bottom sediments, microclimate, flora and fauna: Japanese, South China, Bering, Okhotsk and others.
4. Internal - completely closed from contact with the ocean land. Inside, they are divided into internal (Russian Black, Yellow) and intermaterial (Red, Mediterranean), as well as isolated - not in contact with other similar water bodies (Aral or Dead), semi-closed (for example, Azov, Baltic).

Distribution of seas by degree of salinity

These categories more answer the question "What kind of water is in the sea?". There are two answers:

1. Slightly saline seas - the percentage of salt is lower than in the waters of the ocean. For example, the Black Sea is right here.
2. Highly saline seas - the percentage of salinity of their waters is higher than that of the ocean. As a clear example - the Red Sea.

Seas with fresh water, as can be seen from the classification, no.

Other classifications of the seas

How does the sea still happen? On the temperature of the water, sea water is divided into tropical, temperate climate and polar - northern and southern.

Due to the severity of the ruggedness of the coastline of the sea, it can be divided into heavily-cut and slightly cut. But, for example, the Sargasso Sea has no such line at all.

Having asked ourselves: "What kind of sea is there?", Each of us will make our classification: calm, threatening, affectionate, raging, charming, warm, icy, distant or near. Scientific categories, to a greater extent, are suitable for professional studies of these reservoirs.