Penzhina Bay

 ( Bays Of The Sea Of Okhotsk ) 

Penzhina Bay (, Penzhinskaya guba) is a long and narrow bay off the northwestern coast of Kamchatka, Russia. The bay has one of the strongest tides in the world, which prompted several power station proposals.

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Geography Penzhina Bay is the upper right arm of Shelikhov Bay in the northeastern corner of the Sea of Okhotsk. It is bounded on the east by the Kamchatka Peninsula and on the west by the Taygonos Peninsula, which separates it from Gizhigin Bay. The bay is entered between Cape Taygonos (60°34' N, 160°11' E) to the west and Cape Bozhedomova (60°18' N, 161°53' E) to the east. Cape Povorotnyy lies to the east-northeast of Cape Taygonos. It is about 300 km (186 mi) long and 65 km (40 mi) wide. Near its middle, two peninsulas narrow it to 30 km (18.6 mi), forming The Gorlo. There is ice in the bay from October to May. It has the highest tides of any bay on the Pacific Ocean: 9 m (29.5 ft), 12.9 m (42.3 ft) maximum, versus 17 m (56 ft) in the Bay of Fundy. Its basin is very thinly populated.

The river Penzhina flows into the head of the bay. It is 713 km (443 mi) long and flows east, then south, then southwest to reach the bay.

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History The town of Penzhina was located on the middle Penzhina River and was visited by George Kennan in 1866. The major tributary of the Penzhina is the Aklan, Oklan or Khayakha River which flows southeast and joins the Penzhina about 50 miles from its mouth.

In 1669 the Russians built the ostrog of Aklansk, which was used to subdue the local Koryaks and was an important base on the route south from Anadyrsk to the Kamchatka peninsula before the sea route from Okhotsk opened up. It was attacked by the Koryaks several times and later abandoned.

Between 1849 and 1900, United States whaler hunted in the bay. Mary and Susan, of Stonington, July 23, 1849, Nicholson Whaling Collection (NWC); Coral, of New Bedford, July 28-Aug. 7, 1852, NWC; Florida, of Fairhaven, July 30-Aug. 2, 1861, One Whaling Family (Williams 1964); Arnolda, of New Bedford, July 7, 27–29, 1874, Old Dartmouth Historical Society; Mary and Helen II, of San Francisco, June 9 – July 6, July 8-Aug. 3, 1885, Kendall Whaling Museum.Jochelson, W. (1905). "The Koryak". The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. VI. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History. Leiden/New York.Allen, J. A. (1903). "Report of the mammals collected in northeastern Siberia by the Jesup North Pacific expedition with itinerary and field notes, by N. G. Buxton". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XIX, pp. 101-184. On 11 August 1867, the barque Stella (270 tons), of New Bedford, Capt. Ebenezer F. Nye, was wrecked on Trety Island on the western side of the bay. Two men were killed as the barque was smashed to pieces. The rest of the crew were rescued by several nearby vessels. Sea Breeze, of New Bedford, Aug. 15, 1867, ODHS. Whalemen's Shipping List and Merchants' Transcript (Vol. XXV, No. 35, Oct. 29, 1867, New Bedford).

During a five-day period in late September 1968, the Soviet Union factory ship Vladivostok and its fleet of whaler illegally caught sixty-six balaenidae (likely bowheads) in the bay.Ivashchenko, Y. V. & P. J. Clapham. (2012). "Soviet catches of right whales Eubalaena japonica and bowhead whales Balaena mysticetus in the North Pacific Ocean and the Okhotsk Sea". Endang. Species Res., Vol. 18: 201–217.

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Hydrological potential of the bay The tides in the Penzhin Bay of the Sea of Okhotsk are the highest for the Pacific Ocean, reaching a height of . The tides in Shelikhov Bay are of the diurnal type. The area of Penzhin Bay basin is 20,530 km². Given that the average magnitude of tide is equal to , this gives the diurnal flow of water in the bay as or average discharge .

The passing stream has its own potential energy, which in the gravity field of Earth is above zero only in the case of non-zero head of water ($H\_\{Head\}$) and can be expressed as follows:

$E\; =\; \backslash rho\_\{sw\}\; \backslash cdot\; g\; \backslash cdot\; H\_\{Head\}$, (1)

where $E$ denotes potential energy; $\backslash rho\_\{sw\}$ — density of sea water, equal to 1,027 kg/m³; $S\_\{Basin\}$ — area of basin; $H\_\{Tide\}$ — height of the tide and $g$ — gravitational acceleration, set to 9.81 m/s². The part of the expression in brackets denotes terms defining the mass of water passing through the basin daily.

As can be seen in formula (1), the potential energy becomes zero in the case of zero head of water and in the case of equal heights of head and tide. If considering this formula as a function of head level ($H\_\{Head\}$), it has a form of parabola dependence, with its maximum at $H\_\{Tide\}$ = 2•$H\_\{Head\}$ or at $H\_\{Head\}\; =\; 5$ m. This value of $H\_\{Head\}$ gives two times lower height of tide in the bay and twice smaller average discharge of water — 5 m and (205.3 km³/day), correspondingly.

The substitution of obtained parameters into (1) and dividing it by the day length in seconds gives the average capacity 120 Watt. The latter one yields 1,054 watt-hour or 3.79  of energy annually. Depending on the efficiency of conversion of potential energy into electricity, the total quantity of electricity and electric capacity will have somewhat lower values. If one assumes an efficiency of conversion of 96%, this gives an average electric capacity of 115 GW and an available amount of electricity of 1,012 TW•h or 3.64 J per year.

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External links

• Location
• Penzhin Bay

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