Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is located in Northern Europe, bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainlands of Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Öresund, the Great Belt and the Little Belt. Kattegat then continues in the Skagerrak into the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The Baltic Sea is linked to the White Sea by the White Sea Canal and directly to the North Sea by the Kiel Canal.

Biology

The Baltic Sea is very shallow (average 57 meters, max. 459 meters), and because the straits of Denmark are quite narrow, the waters of the Baltic are not regularly exchanged with the cold waters of the Atlantic. The flow of the rivers into the Baltic is quite high, however, and as a result the salinity of water in the Baltic Sea is somewhere between freshwater and seawater, known as brackish water. The low salinity has led to many slightly divergent species, like the Baltic Sea herring that is a smaller variant of the Atlantic herring. The benthic fauna consists mainly of Monoporeia affinis, which is originally a freshwater species. The Baltic Sea also has practically no tides, which has affected the marine species as compared with the Atlantic.

Related Topics:
Salinity - Freshwater - Seawater - Brackish - Herring - Atlantic - Benthic fauna - Monoporeia affinis - Tides

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Surrounded by many agricultural areas, the Baltic contains significant amounts of fertilizer runoff; furthermore, the city of Saint Petersburg still doesn't process much of its waste water, leading to the blooming of much algae every summer.

Related Topics:
Saint Petersburg - Algae

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