A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean , a lake , or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf , sea , sound , or bight . A cove is a small, circular bay with a narrow entrance. A fjord is an elongated bay formed by glacial action. The term embayment is also used for related features , such as extinct bays or freshwater environments.
12-561: Beagle Gulf is a gulf in the Northern Territory of Australia which opens on its west side to the Timor Sea . The gulf is bounded to the south by the mainland and to the north by Bathurst and Melville Islands . It is connected to Van Diemen Gulf in the east by Clarence Strait . Its south coast includes the natural harbours of Darwin and Bynoe . It is approximately 100 km long and 50 km wide. It surrounds
24-552: A bight . There are various ways in which bays can form. The largest bays have developed through plate tectonics . As the 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. Bays also form through coastal erosion by rivers and glaciers . A bay formed by
36-502: A broad, flat fronting terrace". Bays were significant in the history of human settlement because they provided easy access to marine resources like fisheries . Later they were important in the development of sea trade as the safe anchorage they provide encouraged their selection as ports . The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in
48-401: 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 . Bight (geography) In geography , a bight ( / b aɪ t / ) is a concave bend or curvature in a coastline , river or other geographical feature, or it may refer to
60-400: A very open bay formed by such a feature. Such bays are typically broad, open, shallow and only slightly recessed. Bights are distinguished from sounds , in that sounds are much deeper. Traditionally, explorers defined a bight as a bay that could be sailed out of on a single tack in a square-rigged sailing vessel, regardless of the direction of the wind (typically meaning the apex of
72-413: Is an arm of Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada . Some large bays, such as the Bay of Bengal and Hudson Bay, have varied marine geology . The land surrounding a bay often reduces the strength of winds and blocks waves . Bays may have as wide a variety of shoreline characteristics as other shorelines. In some cases, bays have beaches , which "are usually characterized by a steep upper foreshore with
84-544: The Cocos-Keeling Islands , at the south coast of Java , and from there to Cape Town and back to England . They stayed away from Beagle Gulf by 3000 sea miles and did not know of its existence. The gulf was actually named by Captain John Clements Wickham , commanding HMS Beagle during its survey of northern Australia in 1837-1838, at the beginning of her third and last long voyage. In 1991
96-558: The Quail Island Group . Beagle Gulf was named after the ship HMS Beagle , on which Charles Darwin and Robert Fitzroy sailed around parts of Australia. The Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Places incorrectly states that "it was named in 1836 by Robert Fitzroy, commander of HMS Beagle, after his ship. The Beagle charted the area with Charles Darwin aboard as naturalist." However, Darwin and Fitzroy sailed in 1836 from King George's Sound ( Western Australia ) directly to
108-796: The Beagle Gulf was gazetted by the Northern Territory Government as a locality with the name, Beagle Gulf . The locality has not been added to any existing local government area and is considered to be part of the Northern Territory's unincorporated areas. Bay A bay can be the estuary of a river, such as the Chesapeake Bay , an estuary of the Susquehanna River . Bays may also be nested within each other; for example, James Bay
120-493: The Northern Territory Government proposed the formation of the Beagle Gulf Marine Park. The proposed Marine Park has a significant commercial, recreational conservation value. Zoning plans enable the broadest possible use of marine parks whilst providing for the protection and conservation of significant ecological, scientific, historical, cultural and scenic sites. On 4 April 2007, most of the area occupied by
132-563: The bight is less than 25 degrees from the edges). According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea , an indentation with an area as large as (or larger than) that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation, can be regarded as a bay not merely a bight. The term is derived from Old English byht ("bend, angle, corner; bay, bight") with German Bucht and Danish bugt as cognates , both meaning " bay ". Bight
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#1732765836968144-408: 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 indentation — otherwise it would be referred to as
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