Sea of Okhotsk

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Sea of Okhotsk

The Sea of Okhotsk (; English Transliteration: Okhotskoye More) is a part of the western Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portugal explorer Ferdinand Magellan....
, lying between the Kamchatka Peninsula

Kamchatka Peninsula

The Kamchatka Peninsula is a 1,250-kilometer long peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of 472,300 km?. It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west....
on the east, the Kuril Islands

Kuril Islands

The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast region, is a volcanic archipelago that stretches approximately 1,300 km northeast from Hokkaido, Japan, to Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean....
on the southeast, the island

Island

An island or isle is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets....
of Hokkaido

Hokkaido

, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island and the largest, northernmost of its 47 prefectures of Japan....
to the far south, the island of Sakhalin

Sakhalin

Sakhalin , also Saghalien, is a large elongated island in the North Pacific, lying between 45?50' and 54?24' N. It is part of Russia and is its largest island, administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast....
along the west, and a long stretch of eastern Siberia

Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
n coast (including the Shantar Islands

Shantar Islands

The Shantar Islands are a group of fifteen islands that lie in Uda Bay, in the southwestern zone of the Sea of Okhotsk. These islands are located close to the shores of the Siberian mainland....
) along the west and north.

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Encyclopedia

The Sea of Okhotsk (; English Transliteration: Okhotskoye More) is a part of the western Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

Kamchatka Peninsula

Kuril Islands

Island

An island or isle is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets....
of Hokkaido

Hokkaido

Sakhalin

Siberia

Shantar Islands

Okhotsk

Okhotsk is an urban-type settlement and a seaport at the mouth of the Okhota River on the Sea of Okhotsk, in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia.Located at the eastern end of the Siberian River Routes from the Urals, Okhotsk was the first Russian settlement on the Russian Far East....
, the first Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
n settlement in the Far East

Russian Far East

Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Siberia and the Pacific Ocean....
.

Geography

The Sea of Okhotsk covers 611,000 sq.mi. (1,583,000 sq.km.), with a mean depth of 2,818 feet (859 metres). Its maximum depth is 11,063 feet (3,372 metres). It is connected to the Sea of Japan

Sea of Japan

The Sea of Japan is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, bordered by Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Russia. It is referred to in North Korea as the Korea East Sea and in South Korea as the East Sea....
on either side of Sakhalin: on the west through the Sakhalin Gulf

Sakhalin Gulf

Sakhalin Gulf is a Headlands and bays in the Sea of Okhotsk between continental Russia and northern tip of the Sakhalin Island. The width of the gulf reaches up to 160 km....
and the Gulf of Tartary; on the south, through the La Pérouse Strait

La Perouse Strait

La P?rouse Strait is a strait dividing the southern part of the Russian island of Sakhalin from the northern part of the Japanese island of Hokkaido, and connecting the Sea of Japan on the west with the Sea of Okhotsk on the east....
.

In winter

Winter

Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. Calculated astronomy, it begins on the solstice and ends on the equinox. It is the season with the shortest days and the lowest average temperatures....
, navigation on the Sea of Okhotsk becomes difficult, or even impossible, due to the formation of large ice floes, because the large amount of freshwater from the Amur

Amur

The Amur River or Heilong Jiang is the Earth's ninth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China....
lowers the salinity

Salinity

Salinity is the saltiness or dissolved salt content of a body of water. Salinity in Australian English and North American English may also refer to the salt in soil ....
and raises the freezing point

Freezing Point

Freezing Point is a news journal in the People's Republic of China which has been the subject of controversy over its criticism of Communist Party officials and the sympathetic ear it lent to a Chinese historian who had criticized official history textbooks....
of the sea. The distribution and thickness of ice floes depends on many factors: the location, the time of year, water currents, and the sea temperatures.

With the exception of Hokkaido

Hokkaido

, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island and the largest, northernmost of its 47 prefectures of Japan....
, one of the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
ese Home Islands, the sea is surrounded on all sides by territory administered by the Russian Federation. For this reason, it is generally considered as being under Russian sovereignty.

Islands

Some of the Islands limiting the Sea of Okhotsk from the south, like Hokkaido and Sakhalin, are very large. Practically all islands in the Okhotsk Sea are either coastal islands or they belong to the Kuril

Kuril Islands

Ion Island

Ion Island , formerly Ostrov Svyatovy Iony, or "Saint Jonas' Island", is a small island in the Sea of Okhotsk. It is 1.6 Km in length and 850 m wide and it has a conical shape....
is the only island in the Sea of Okhotsk that is located in the open sea. The majority of the islands in the Okhotsk Sea are uninhabited, being an ideal breeding ground for seals and seabirds.

History

The Russian explorers Ivan Moskvitin

Ivan Moskvitin

Ivan Yuryevich Moskvitin was a Russian explorer, presumably a native of Moscow, who led a Russian reconnaissance party to the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first person on record to sail in the Sea of Okhotsk....
and Vassili Poyarkov

Vassili Poyarkov

Vassili Danilovich Poyarkov was the first Russian explorer of the Amur region.The Russian expansion into Siberia began with the conquest of the Khanate of Sibir in 1582....
were the first Europeans to visit the Sea of Okhotsk and the island of Sakhalin

Sakhalin

Sakhalin , also Saghalien, is a large elongated island in the North Pacific, lying between 45?50' and 54?24' N. It is part of Russia and is its largest island, administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast....
in the 1640s. The first and foremost Russian settlement on the shore was the port of Okhotsk

Okhotsk

Ayan

The settlement was founded by the Russian-American Company in 1843 in hopes of establishing a port serving the Amga-Ayan Highway. This was the shortest route from Yakutsk to the Pacific Ocean and was used for shipping furs from the heartland of Yakutia....
in the 1840s. The Russian-American Company

Russian-American Company

The Russian-American Company was a state-sponsored trading company begun by Grigory Shelikhov and Natalia Shelikhov and Nikolai Rezanov. Chartered by Tsar Paul of Russia in 1799....
all but monopolized the commercial navigation of the sea in the first half of the 19th century.

The Second Kamchatka Expedition

Second Kamchatka expedition

The Second Kamchatka expedition was led by Denmark Vitus Bering after being chosen by Peter I of Russia to lead the first Kamchatka expedition....
under Vitus Bering

Vitus Bering

Vitus Jonassen Bering was a Denmark-born navigator in the service of the Russian Navy, a captain-komandor known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich....
systematically mapped the entire coast of the sea, starting in 1733. La Pérouse

La Perouse

La Perouse may refer to*Jean-Fran?ois de Galaup, comte de La P?rouse, a French naval officer and explorer,and the following places which were named after him:...
and William Robert Broughton

William Robert Broughton

William Robert Broughton was a United Kingdom naval officer in the late 18th century. As a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, he commanded HMS Chatham as part of the voyage of exploration through the Pacific Ocean led by Captain George Vancouver in the early 1790s....
were the first non-Russian European navigators known to have passed through these waters. Ivan Krusenstern explored the eastern coast of the Sakhalin in 1805. Mamiya Rinzo

Mamiya Rinzo

Mamiya Rinzo was a Japanese people Exploration of the late Edo period. Later in his life he would become an undercover agent for the Tokugawa shogunate....
and Gennady Nevelskoy

Gennady Nevelskoy

Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy was a Russian navigator.In 1848 Nevelskoy led the expedition in the Russian Far East, exploring the area of the Sakhalin and the outlet of the Amur River....
determined that the Sakhalin was indeed an island separated from the mainland by a narrow strait. The first detailed summary of the hydrology

Hydrology

Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth, and thus addresses both the hydrologic cycle and water resources....
of the sea was prepared and published by Stepan Makarov

Stepan Makarov

Stepan Osipovich Makarov was a famous Imperial Russia vice-admiral, a highly accomplished and decorated commander of the Imperial Russian Navy, and a distinguished oceanographer, awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books....
in 1894.

During the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension and competition that existed between a number of world powers, including the United States, the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, France, United Kingdom and those countries' respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s....
, the Sea of Okhotsk was the scene of several successful U.S. Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the navy of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy currently has approximately 331,682 personnel on active duty as of 31 December 2008 and 124,000 in the United States Navy Reserve....
operations (including Operation Ivy Bells

Operation Ivy Bells

Operation Ivy Bells was a joint United States Navy and National Security Agency mission whose objective was to place Telephone tappings on Soviet Union Submarine communications cable during the Cold War....
) to tap Soviet Navy

Soviet Navy

The Soviet Navy was the naval part of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy would have been instrumental in any perceived Warsaw Pact role in an all-out war with NATO when it would have to stop the naval convoys bringing reinforcements over the Atlantic to the Western European theatre....
undersea communications cables. These operations were documented in the book Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage , published in 1998 by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, is a nonfiction book about United States Navy submarine operations during the Cold War....
. The sea (and surrounding area) were also the scene of the Soviet PVO Strany

Soviet Anti-Air Defense

Voyska PVO was the air defense branch of the Soviet Union military. It continued being a service branch of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1998....
attack on Korean Air Flight 007

Korean Air Flight 007

Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was a Korean Air civilian airliner that was shot down by Soviet Union interceptor aircraft on September 1, 1983 over the Sea of Japan, just west of Sakhalin island....
in 1983. The Soviet Pacific Fleet used the Sea as a ballistic missile submarine bastion

Bastion (naval)

A bastion in naval strategy is a heavily-defended area of water in which friendly naval forces can operate safely. Typically, that area will be partially enclosed by friendly shoreline, defended by naval mines, monitored by sensors, and heavily patrolled by surface, submarine, and air forces....
, a strategy that Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
continues.

In the Japanese language

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
, the sea has no traditional Japanese name despite its close location to the Japanese territories and is called Ohotsuku-kai, which is a transcription of the Russian name. Additionally, Abashiri Subprefecture

Abashiri Subprefecture

is a Subprefectures in Hokkaido of Hokkaido, Japan. It has an area of 10,690.09 square kilometers and a population of 329,446 as of July 31, 2004. It was established in 1897....
, the part of Hokkaido which faces the sea, is often called the , named after the sea.

The Sea of Okhotsk was a hotbed for 19th century whaling

Whaling

Whaling is the hunting of whales and dates back to at least 4,000 BC. The evolution of traditional Arctic whaling developed with increasing rapidity with early organized fleets in the 17th century; competitive national whaling industries in the 18th and 19th centuries; and the introduction of factory ships along with the concept of whale "har...
ships from the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
. Ships would sail from Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a U.S. state located in the New England region of the Northeastern United States United States. It borders Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north....
around the tip of South America

South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
, to the Sea of Okhotsk, where they would capture whales before returning to the eastern United States. The entire journey took roughly three years, but was undertaken by many in hopes of procuring the revenue associated with the enormous value given to the oil found in whale blubber

Blubber

Blubber is a thick layer of Blood vessel fat found under the skin of all cetaceans, pinnipeds and sirenians....
.

Oil reserves

Twenty-nine zones of possible oil and gas accumulation have been identified on the Sea of Okhotsk shelf which runs along the coast. Total reserves are estimated at 3.5 billion tons of equivalent fuel, including 1.2 billion tons of oil and 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas.

Notable seaports

Abashiri, Hokkaido
Hokkaido

, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island and the largest, northernmost of its 47 prefectures of Japan....
, Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
Magadan
Magadan

Magadan is a port types of inhabited localities in Russia on the Sea of Okhotsk and gateway to the Kolyma region. It is the administrative center of Magadan Oblast , in the Russian Far East....
, Magadan
Magadan Oblast

Magadan Oblast is a federal subjects of Russia of Russia in the Far Eastern Federal District federal districts of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Magadan....
, Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
Monbetsu
Monbetsu

is the name of several places in Japan:* Monbetsu, Hokkaido, a city in Abashiri Subprefecture, Hokkaido* Monbetsu District, Hokkaido, a district of Abashiri Subprefecture, Hokkaido...
, Hokkaido
Hokkaido

, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island and the largest, northernmost of its 47 prefectures of Japan....
, Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
Palana
Palana

Palana is an urban-type settlement and the administrative center of Koryak Okrug of Kamchatka Krai, Russia. It is located on the west coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula on the right bank of the Palana River, within eight kilometers from the Sea of Okhotsk....
, Kamchatka
Kamchatka Krai

Kamchatka Krai is a federal subjects of Russia of Russia. It is a krai formed July 1, 2007 as a result of the merger of Kamchatka Oblast and Koryak Okrug, after a referendum held on the issue on October 23, 2005....
, Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
Wakkanai, Hokkaido
Hokkaido

, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island and the largest, northernmost of its 47 prefectures of Japan....
, Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is a types of inhabited localities in Russia on Sakhalin, Russia, administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast . The city was formerly called Vladimirovka between 1882-1905, then Toyohara between 1905-1946....
, Sakhalin
Sakhalin Oblast

Sakhalin Oblast is a federal subjects of Russia of Russia comprising the island of Sakhalin and Kuril Islands.The oblast has an area of 87,100 km? and a population of 546,695 ....
, Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....