18-759: The South Atlantic Bight is a bight in the United States coastline extending from Cape Hatteras , North Carolina to the Upper Florida Keys . The Bight forms the western boundary of the Sargasso Sea and the Gulf Stream ocean current forms the eastern boundary of the ecosystem of the bight. Major cities along the bight include from north to south: Wilmington , Myrtle Beach , Charleston , Savannah , Jacksonville , St. Augustine , West Palm Beach , Fort Lauderdale , and Miami . Within
36-406: 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 the bight is less than 25 degrees from
54-536: A protected anchorage. It can be part of most large islands. In the more general northern European usage, a sound is a strait or the narrowest part of a strait. In Scandinavia and around the Baltic Sea , there are more than a hundred straits named Sund , mostly named for the island they separate from the continent or a larger island. In contrast, the Sound is the common international short name for Øresund,
72-508: A valley on a coast then receding, or the sea invading a glacier valley. The glacier produces a sound that often has steep, near vertical sides that extend deep underwater. The sea floor is often flat and deeper at the landward end than the seaward end, due to glacial moraine deposits. This type of sound is more properly termed a fjord (or fiord). The sounds in Fiordland , New Zealand, have been formed this way. A sound generally connotes
90-753: A zone of intermediary depth before dropping to the Hatteras Abyssal Plain with the Blake Escarpment. The Escarpment is defined as the geological bathymetric eastern boundary of the bight. Within the northern plateau is the Charleston Bump which deflects the Gulf Stream northeastward from its initial northerly motion. Due to storms and unpredictable shoaling, the area off the North Carolina Outer Banks
108-850: Is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic . The southern part of the bight borders the Bermuda Triangle where many aircraft and sea vessels have been lost off Florida from various causes. The seafloor of the bight contains various debris and discarded rocket components from decades of launches from Cape Canaveral . A notable spacecraft, the Liberty Bell 7 was recovered from the Blake Escarpment in 1999 after being lost. Debris from launches often washes up on shores as far as North Carolina after being dredged up by hurricanes and moved around by currents. Hurricanes frequently make landfall along
126-414: Is not etymologically related to " bite " (Old English bītan ). Sound (geography) In geography , a sound is a smaller body of water usually connected to a sea or an ocean. A sound may be an inlet that is deeper than a bight and wider than a fjord ; or a narrow sea channel or an ocean channel between two land masses, such as a strait ; or also a lagoon between a barrier island and
144-654: The English noun sin , German Sünde ("apart from God's law"), and Swedish synd . English has also the adjective "asunder" and the noun "sundry', and Swedish has the adjective sönder ("broken"). In Swedish and in both Norwegian languages , "sund" is the general term for any strait. In Danish, Swedish and Nynorsk , it is even part of names worldwide, such as in Swedish "Berings sund" and "Gibraltar sund", and in Nynorsk "Beringsundet" and "Gibraltarsundet". In German "Sund"
162-649: The Gulf of Mexico from the mainland, along much of the gulf coasts of Alabama and Mississippi . The term sound is derived from the Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse word sund , which also means " swimming ". The word sund is also documented in Old Norse and Old English as meaning "gap" (or "narrow access"). This suggests a relation to verbs meaning "to separate", such as absondern and aussondern ( German ), söndra ( Swedish ), sondre ( Norwegian ), as well as
180-713: The South Atlantic Bight, the coast from Cape Fear in North Carolina to Cape Canaveral in Florida forms a fairly smooth curve known as the Georgia Bight or Georgia Embayment . The shape of the coast influences the height of the tides. Tidal ranges are only 2 feet (0.61 m) at the extremes of the bight, Cape Fear and Miami, but reach 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3.0 m) along the Georgia coast in
198-645: The U.S. state of Washington . It was also applied to bodies of open water not fully open to the ocean, such as Caamaño Sound or Queen Charlotte Sound in Canada; or broadenings or mergings at the openings of inlets, like Cross Sound in Alaska and Fitz Hugh Sound in British Columbia. Along the east coast and Gulf Coast of the United States, a number of bodies of water that separate islands from
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#1732775563998216-567: The bight except in Northern Florida and Georgia where seasonal steering patterns usually cause storms to recurve before encountering land in these areas. The warmer waters of the Gulf Stream allows storms to intensify before making landfall. Notable storms include hurricanes Hugo , Fran , Floyd , Isabel , Matthew , Florence , and Dorian in the Carolinas as well as hurricanes King , David , Francis , and Jeanne , in Florida. In
234-622: 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
252-591: The mainland are called "sounds". Long Island Sound separates Long Island from the eastern shores of the Bronx , Westchester County , and southern Connecticut . Similarly, in North Carolina , a number of large lagoons lie between the mainland and its barrier beaches, the Outer Banks . These include Pamlico Sound , Albemarle Sound , Bogue Sound , and several others. The Mississippi Sound separates
270-478: The mainland. A sound is often formed by the seas flooding a river valley . This produces a long inlet where the sloping valley hillsides descend to sea-level and continue beneath the water to form a sloping sea floor. These sounds are more appropriately called rias . The Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand are good examples of this type of formation. Sometimes a sound is produced by a glacier carving out
288-662: The middle of the bight. The Sea Islands stretch along the central part of the Georgia Bight shore, from the mouth of the Santee River to the mouth of the St. Johns River . The Sea Islands have a complex geological history. John Zeigler distinguishes three types: "erosion remnant islands", "marsh islands", and " beach-ridge islands ". The bight is fairly shallow with the continental shelf extending far offshore except off south Florida and North Carolina. The Blake Plateau forms
306-695: The narrow stretch of water that separates Denmark and Sweden , and is the main waterway between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea . It is also a colloquial short name, among others, for Plymouth Sound , England . In areas explored by the British in the late 18th century, particularly the northwest coast of North America, the term "sound" was applied to inlets containing large islands, such as Howe Sound in British Columbia and Puget Sound in
324-410: The winter, Nor'easters begin their formation in the South Atlantic Bight as northeast moving low pressure systems carrying cold air from Canada encounter the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. 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 a very open bay formed by such
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