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The Barents Sea ((ロシア語:Баренцево море), ''Barentsevo More'' (ノルウェー語:Barentshavet)) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia with vast majority of it lying in Russian territorial waters.〔World Wildlife Fund, 2008.〕 Known in the Middle Ages as the ''Murman Sea'', the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz. It is a rather shallow shelf sea, with an average depth of , and is an important site for both fishing and hydrocarbon exploration.〔O. G. Austvik, 2006.〕 The Barents Sea is bordered by the Kola Peninsula to the south, the shelf edge towards the Norwegian Sea to the west, and the archipelagos of Svalbard to the northwest, Franz Josef Land to the north east and Novaya Zemlya to the east. Novaya Zemlya, an extension of the northern part of the Ural Mountains, separates the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea. ==Geography== The southern half of the Barents Sea, including the ports of Murmansk (Russia) and Vardø (Norway) remain ice-free year round due to the warm North Atlantic drift. In September, the entire Barents Sea is more or less completely ice-free. Until the Winter War (1939–40), Finland's territory also reached to the Barents Sea, with the harbor at Petsamo being Finland's only ice-free winter harbor. There are three main types of water masses in the Barents Sea: Warm, salty Atlantic water (temperature >3 °C, salinity >35) from the North Atlantic drift, cold Arctic water (temperature <0 °C, salinity <35) from the north, and warm, but not very salty coastal water (temperature >3 °C, salinity <34.7). Between the Atlantic and Polar waters, a front called the Polar Front is formed. In the western parts of the sea (close to Bear Island), this front is determined by the bottom topography and is therefore relatively sharp and stable from year to year, while in the east (towards Novaya Zemlya), it can be quite diffuse and its position can vary a lot between years. The lands of Novaya Zemlya attained most of their early Holocene coastal deglaciation approximately 10,000 years before present.〔J. Zeeberg, 2001.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Barents Sea」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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