A marginal sea is a part of an ocean partially enclosed by land such as islands, archipelagos, or peninsulas. Unlike mediterranean seas, marginal seas have ocean currents caused by ocean winds. Many marginal seas are enclosed by island arcs that were formed from the subduction of one oceanic plate beneath another.

Marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean:

• The Barents Sea
• The Chukchi Sea (separated by Wrangel Island)
• The Laptev Sea (separated by the Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands)
• The Norwegian Sea

Marginal seas of the Atlantic Ocean:

• The English Channel
• The Irish Sea (separated by Ireland)
• The North Sea (by Great Britain)
• The Norwegian Sea (by Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Shetland)
• The Scotia Sea (by the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands)

Marginal seas of the Indian Ocean:

• The Andaman Sea (separated by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands)
• The Java Sea (separated by the Greater Sunda Islands)
• The Red Sea
• The Sea of Zanj: a historic entity off the South-east African coast and including the Mascarene islands

Marginal seas of the Mediterranean Sea:

• The Adriatic Sea
• The Aegean Sea
• The Alboran Sea
• The Balearic Sea
• The Sea of Crete
• The Ionian Sea
• The Ligurian Sea
• The Myrtoan Sea
• The Thracian Sea
• The Tyrrhenian Sea

Marginal seas of the Pacific Ocean:

• The Bering Sea (separated by the Aleutian Islands)
• The Coral Sea (by the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu)
• The East China Sea (by the Ryukyu Islands)
• The Philippine Sea (by the Ogasawara Islands, the Mariana Islands, and Palau)
• The Sea of Japan (by the Japanese Archipelago)
• The Sea of Okhotsk (by the Kurile Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula)
• The South China Sea (by the Philippines)
• The Yellow Sea (by the Korean Peninsula)

Marginal seas of the Southern Ocean:

• The Scotia Sea

Seas barely marginal include the Tasman Sea.

Note that although the Caribbean Sea is enclosed by most of the Antilles and the mainland of the Americas, it is not a marginal sea because (together with the Gulf of Mexico) it forms the American mediterranean sea and its currents are mainly caused by salinity and temperature differences rather than by ocean winds.

[edit] See also

• Mediterranean sea
• Sea
• Ocean

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