• Images
• Videos
• Documents
• Books
• Articles

Definition

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in the coastline, whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain land-locked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation, however, shall not be regarded as a bay unless its area is as large as (or larger than) that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation⁹¹⁰ — otherwise it would be referred to as a bight.

Types

• Open bay — a bay that is widest at the mouth, flanked by headlands.
• Enclosed bay — a bay whose mouth is narrower than its widest part, flanked by at least one peninsula.
• Semi-enclosed bay — an open bay whose exit is made into narrower channels by one or more islands within its mouth.
  • Back-barrier bay — a semi-enclosed bay separated from open water by one or more barrier islands or spits.¹¹
• Juridicial bay - A legal distinction defining a bay meeting certain criterion as inland waters, and thus the waters of a state,¹²¹³ rather than international waters or the territorial waters of a national government a state may be sovereign to. Foremost among the criteria remains that the area impounded by the bay must be greater than that of a semicircle drawn across its mouth.¹⁴

Formation

Bays form variously by plate tectonics, coastal erosion by rivers, and glaciers.¹⁵

The largest bays have developed through plate tectonics. As the Paleozoic/early Mesozoic era super-continent Pangaea broke up along curved and indented fault lines, the continents moved apart and left large bays; these include the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bay of Bengal, which is the world's largest bay.¹⁶

Bays also form through coastal erosion by rivers and glaciers. A bay formed by a glacier is a fjord. Rias are created by rivers and are characterised by more gradual slopes. Deposits of softer rocks erode more rapidly, forming bays, while harder rocks erode less quickly, leaving headlands.

See also

• Bay platform – Dead-end railway platform at a railway station that has through lines
• Great capes – Three major capes of the traditional clipper route

Notes

References

1. "Definition of BAY". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on March 21, 2017. Retrieved March 21, 2017. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bay ↩

2. "Chesapeake Bay, Maryland". Maryland Manual On-Line. Maryland State Archives. November 28, 2016. Archived from the original on March 16, 2017. Retrieved March 21, 2017. http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/ches.html ↩

3. "bay". Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. Archived from the original on March 22, 2017. Retrieved March 21, 2017. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/bay ↩

4. "What is a Fjord, and how is it formed". Norway Today. 2016-05-08. Archived from the original on 2017-12-25. Retrieved 2017-12-30. https://web.archive.org/web/20171225031214/http://norwaytoday.info/travel/what-is-a-fjord-and-how-is-it-formed/ ↩

5. "Chesapeake Bay, Maryland". Maryland Manual On-Line. Maryland State Archives. November 28, 2016. Archived from the original on March 16, 2017. Retrieved March 21, 2017. http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/ches.html ↩

6. Maurice Schwartz, Encyclopedia of Coastal Science (2006), p. 129. ↩

7. Jones, Terry L. (July 1991). "Marine-Resource Value and the Priority of Coastal Settlement: A California Perspective". American Antiquity. 56 (3): 419–443. doi:10.2307/280893. ISSN 0002-7316. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0002731600068086/type/journal_article ↩

8. Carreck, Rosalind, ed. (1982). The Family Encyclopedia of Natural History. The Hamlyn Publishing Group. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-11-202257-2. 978-0-11-202257-2 ↩

9. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf ↩

10. "For the purposes of this Convention, a bay is a well-marked indentation whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain land-locked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation shall not, however, be regarded as a bay unless its area is as large as, or larger than, that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation. For the purpose of measurement, the area of an indentation is that lying between the low-water mark around the shore of the indentation and a line joining the low-water mark of its natural entrance points. Where, because of the presence of islands, an indentation has more than one mouth, the semi-circle shall be drawn on a line as long as the sum total of the lengths of the lines across the different mouths. Islands within an indentation shall be included as if they were part of the water area of the indentation."[8] ↩

11. "Spatial distribution of water level impact to back-barrier bays". U.S. Geological Survey. Retrieved 2023-08-09. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/spatial-distribution-water-level-impact-back-barrier-bays ↩

12. Juridicial bay, Glossary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) https://www.noaa.gov/general-counsel/gc-international-section/glossary#:~:text=Juridical%20Bay.,water%20status%20of%20juridical%20bays. ↩

13. See: United States v. Maine, aka "Rhode Island and New York Boundary Case". FindLaw. 1985. Archived from the original on 27 June 2013. Retrieved 15 October 2014. /wiki/United_States_v._Maine ↩

14. Confirming Sovereignty in Internal Waters, International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) https://www.fig.net/resources/proceedings/fig_proceedings/fig2019/ppt/ts02d/TS02D_fadhli_putri_et_al_10099_ppt.pdf ↩

15. Carreck, Rosalind, ed. (1982). The Family Encyclopedia of Natural History. The Hamlyn Publishing Group. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-11-202257-2. 978-0-11-202257-2 ↩

16. Carreck, Rosalind, ed. (1982). The Family Encyclopedia of Natural History. The Hamlyn Publishing Group. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-11-202257-2. 978-0-11-202257-2 ↩