A bay is a recessed, body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay.
A bay can be the estuary of a river, such as the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary of the Susquehanna River.
The land surrounding a bay often reduces the strength of and blocks . 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 a broad, flat fronting terrace".[Maurice Schwartz, Encyclopedia of Coastal Science (2006), p. 129.] Bays were significant in the history of human settlement because they provided easy access to marine resources like Fishery.
Definition
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in 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[ United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea] — otherwise it would be referred to as a bight.
Types
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Open bay — a bay that is widest at the mouth, flanked by .
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Enclosed bay — a bay whose mouth is narrower than its widest part, flanked by at least one peninsula.
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Semi-enclosed bay — an open bay whose exit is made into narrower channels by one or more within its mouth.
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Back-barrier bay — a semi-enclosed bay separated from open water by one or more or spits.
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Juridicial bay - A legal distinction defining a bay meeting certain criterion as inland waters, and thus the waters of a state,
[ Juridicial bay, Glossary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)] rather than international waters or the territorial waters of a national government a state may be sovereign to. Foremost among the criteria remains that the area impounded by the bay must be greater than that of a semicircle drawn across its mouth.[ Confirming Sovereignty in Internal Waters, International Federation of Surveyors (FIG)]
- Among the matters impacted by the definition are the right to the seabed and its minerals, control over fishing, the right of seafarers to innocent passage, and whether the affected coast is an international border or not.
Formation
Bays form variously by plate tectonics, coastal erosion by rivers, and .
The largest bays have developed through plate tectonics. As the Paleozoic/early Mesozoic era 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 a glacier is a fjord. 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 .
See also
Notes
