In a the "ocean" thread in Q&A, Jackie posted that she lived 650 miles from the sea.

That seems a long way to me as an island dweller. I have never lived more than a two hour drive from the sea and several times, since living in Scotland, have I seen the east and the west coast in the same day. So I looked up the distances and realised that it is impossible to live more than 90 miles from the sea in the UK. You could fit the whole length of Britain between Jackie and the ocean. I was wondering if that makes Jackie the furthest from the coast or do Sparteye, Tsuwm or Jazzo live further? Anyone else? I think most of the Australians on the board live, if not work (hi Stales) near the coast. I'm not sure if anyone is Asia or Africa is further.


Britain is just under 1,000 km (620m) long from the south coast of England to the extreme north of Scotland , and covers an area of about 242,000 sq km (96,800 sq miles). At its widest point, it is 500 km (310m) across.
It is impossible to be more than 90 miles from the shore.[Aside: I can’t find out the exact point, apart from “a village in South Derbyshire”or the distance – does anyone know?]
Mainland Scotland measures 78,789 sq km; 30,420 sq m. The maximum length on the mainland is between the Mull of Galloway in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, measuring 440km, 274 miles. The widest part of the mainland stretches from Applecross in the west to Buchan Ness in the east, measuring 248km, 154 miles. The narrowest part of Scotland is between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, measuring only 41km, 25 miles.

Smartalecky reply:

Me from the sea? No, never, not me! The sea's inside of me,
you see...

Only about two and a half hours to the Atlantic...and the river's right down the road...and the pond is just down the hill...

Over a mile under 2, to Long Island sound. (lets say 2k)
about 10 miles to the closest point of Atlantic ocean, favorite, about 25.

Fearless (Meagan) lives in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The Alice is 1,500km (say +1,000 miles) from the nearest capital city, Darwin, which is a hop and a skip from the Timor Sea.

I wish she was here to claim the victory for herself....

stales

coast-to-coast in the US is 2500+ miles (one of the shorter routes). my home is say 1100 air miles to NYC and 1400+ from Portland OR. sorry stales.

(the geographical center of US is somewhere in SD)

I'm guessin', among th USns on the board, TEd Remington in Colorado...TEd?

The Only WO'N!

Dear jmh: Over fifty years ago, there was a joke about the two Boston ladies dining on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. One cautioned the other: "Don't order any seafood, Agatha. Remember, we're three thousand miles from the ocean!"
On that basis, I am three thousand miles from the New England coast where I grew up.

I'm a little east and a little closer to the sea than Jackie, so it's not me.

Tsuwm, what about the Hudson Bay? You're closer to that than the Atlantic, right? That's kind of like the sea.

And I think South Dakota is only the geographic center if you include Alaska, which doesn't do much for you if you're looking for distances from the ocean. I think the geographic center of the 48 contiguous is in Nebraska.

tsuwm: my home [Minneapolis] is say 1100 air miles to NYC

1023 miles from NYC, tsuwm, but only 938 miles from Baltimore.

This would still give tsuwm the USA title over TEd in Denver. Though TEd is farther from San Francisco (963 miles), his outlet in Galveston, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico (922 miles) is just a bit closer than tsuwm's 938.

As jazzo notes, James Bay (at the southern tip of Hudson Bay) would knock tswum out of the running, if it counts.

[Figures from http://www.indo.com/distance]

>Tsuwm, what about the Hudson Bay? You're closer to that than the Atlantic, right? That's kind of like the sea.

In the UK example that I gave, any salt water counts, which is why you have to include the Firth of Forth and Firth of Clyde. The Hudson bay would certainly count.

As a Seattle-light, I may actually be one of those who live the closest! My apartment building is in this photo: http://makeashorterlink.com/?C11225CB

Edit: Thank you, jmh!

I tried working out the distance from Minneapolis to the Hudson bay using mapquest.com but I couldn't find a place with a road!

I think that I've worked out a methodology. Using a good map, use a piece of lightweight paper and a compass to work out the largest circle that only touches but does not ovelap the coastline at any point. The centre of the circle will be the furthest from the coast and concentric circles (like countour lines) will show places that are the same distance. I'm sure that there is an electronic equivalent, maybe copying a map into Powerpoint will do it.

Oh well, it's better than doing the accounts!

jo, using a map won't work, because of the inevitable distortion when the curved earth-surface is depicted on a flat plane of paper.

But you can use the link I noted. Of course, no decent city-name is available for any spot on James Bay, to plug into that link. But the link will accept coordinates of latitude and longitude, which you can get from the map.

On that basis, as I recall, tsuwm is about 740 miles from James Bay.

>The Hudson bay would certainly count.

having never been, and with no desire to go, sort of takes it out of my thinking.. :)

()

> sort of takes it out of my thinking.. :)

Well it is abroad ;-) (I seem to remember that coming up in a previous discussion - has Mr President worked that out yet?)

I forgot about the curvature of the earth in calculations because it don't curve too much in 90 miles.

By the way Bill -
if your ladies had been looking at my 1744 map of the USA, they would have known that they only needed to go as far as the Grand Canyon to hit the sea.

Those of us who have to drive the Long Island Expressway to the coast live further than any of y'all.

Who lives the furthest from the coast?

Well, Michigan being a rather penninsular state, we have a veritable plethora of coasts to choose from, wouldn't you say?
My turn to pick some nits here

but connie, i thought the great lakes were fresh, not salt water..
Michigan has lots of lake frontage, but it is coastline?
(Not that the great lakes are anything to sneer at.. i do remember Cap't K being suitable impressed last year..)

We call it the Third Coast.
http://www.wmich.edu/thirdcoast/

Chicago calls it the Third Coast
http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/

Some call it the Fourth Coast, so as not to piss off Texas an' all.
http:// http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pr/about/history.html

U of W in Madison, Wisconsin also calls Lake Michigan's shore a coast.
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/research/wrm98/

As does the Federal Government of the U.S. of A.
http://tis.eh.doe.gov/oepa/law_sum/CZMA.HTM

How'm I doin' on the nit pickin', Faldage? This bein' my first try an' all.

Conversation between Abraham Lincoln and a troublemaker:
How many legs does a sheep have, if you call a tail a leg?
Lincoln: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Calling it a coast doesn't make it one. IMHO, that "third coast" is civic boosterism intended to emphasize that the city, though inland, is a suitable port of oceanic shipping.

The Alice is 1,500km (say +1,000 miles) from the nearest capital city, Darwin, which is a hop and a skip from the Timor Sea.

Since no one has taken stalesy to task for this one I guess it's up to me. The Alice might be 1000 miles from the Timor Sea but it's only about 600 from the Great Australian Bight.

Spot on Faldage and - "whoa, busted".

I knew Darwin was the closest capital city and I knew it was on the coast....

Reading between the lines, I think you're suggesting I should've looked at a map.....

stales

You're forgiven, stales. It should, perhaps, be noted at this point that not many people know that the Great Australian Bight is so named because it looks like some giant creature has taken a great bight out of the southern edge of Australia.

Didn't we have some threads or posts discussing "bights"?

[durn ... I know, I hear you saying, YCLIU ... here we are; troy's thread:]
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=58133

having never been, and with no desire to go, sort of takes it out of my thinking.. :)

Whaaa? C'mon, dontcha wanna see tundra and whales and polar bears? They have specially desgined vehicles in Churchill, Manitoba (on Hudson Bay) to take tourists out to see polar bears, so that if the polar bear gets it into his head that he wants to attack the vehicle he won't be able to harm it. And the reason you had trouble with roads, jo, is that there aren't any to Churchill. You have to take the train, or a plane. And for a community on James Bay, try Moosonee, Ontario (according to my 1985 MacMillan School Atlas).

There used to be a fact sheet on Canadian superlatives which I suspect would have listed the farthest place in Canada from any ocean. But I can't find it right now.

And here's the rest of the story...(courtesy of http://www.ea.gov.au/coasts/mpa/gab/#what - with edits.

The continental shelf in the Great Australian Bight is very wide, in some places extending well over 200 NM. It has the longest ice-free east-west extent of coastline in the Southern Hemisphere Edit: OMG!!! Really - wow!!! and is adjacent to the only circumpolar ocean in the world - the Southern Ocean. The waters are treacherous and the region experiences some of the world's highest and most persistent waves.

The Great Australian Bight region is an area of great conservation significance. It provides important calving habitat for the endangered southern right whale and colonies of Australia's only endemic (that is, occurs nowhere else in the world) pinniped - the Australian sea lion - are found there. It supports some of the highest levels of marine diversity and endemism found anywhere in Australia, particularly among red algae (sea weed), ascidians (sea squirts), bryozoans, molluscs (shellfish) and echinoderms (sea urchins and sea stars).

The abundant wildlife in this region exists due to the unique environmental conditions arising from its location in a transitional zone between the warm tropical waters from Western Australia carried to the Great Australian Bight via the Leeuwin current, and the cold waters from other areas around South Australia. The seasonal influence of the Leeuwin current and the localised periodic cold, nutrient-rich up-wellings in the eastern part of the region provide ideal conditions in which biodiversity can prosper.

There are no major land-based watercourses that flow into the Bight. The arid climate of the Nullabor and the flat terrain of the coastline has meant that very little land-based sediment has been washed into the wide continental shelf. This lack of fluvial or land-based deposits has been a major factor in preserving a comprehensive record of global climate and oceanographic changes in the sediments along the southern temperate Australian coastline.

stales

Speaking of the Hudson Bay, Lets go Next week-- it's the 400 and something birthday of the Hudson Bay Trading Company, the oldest commercial establishment in North America...(May 2nd)-- i don't think we need to add to the birthday list.. i just happened to know it..

they have great birthday sales, and what with exchange rates, we could save a bundle..

So, tsuwm... I'm at 32nd & Excelsior. If it's down to us, which one of us is it gonna be?

BTW, I've been to a monument in Rugby(?), ND, whose sole purpose as a community seems to be touting their position as geographical center of North America. FWIW...

is adjacent to the only circumpolar ocean in the world - the Southern Ocean.

Poppycock! Since when is there a "Southern Ocean"? All that down there is the combination of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic. The only circumpolar "ocean" is the Arctic. not that the oceans are really made of anything different anyway . . .

Sorry Jazzo - the Southern Ocean is there.

The Pacific, Atlantic and Indian are merely its northern extensions.

stales

Poppycock! Since when is there a "Southern Ocean"? All that down there is the combination of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic. The only circumpolar "ocean" is the Arctic. not that the oceans are really made of anything different anyway . . .

Careful Jazzo, there are oceanographers aBoard! The "Southern Ocean" is not one of the Big 3 but it is important in an oceanographic sense. The number one reason (which brings me to your second statment) is that it is the only circumpolar ocean. The Arctic has some little problems with that where LAND is in the way - preventing a current from running in a circle all around the world at a given latitude (called a zonal current). On the other hand, with the way the Southern Hemisphere turned out, you actually have a zonal current running in a circle around the South Pole between about 40°S and 70°S. It's called - wait for it - the Antarctic Circumpolar Current! (South America forces it to narrow a bit but there's still plenty of room for a zonal current.)

And of course they are all made of different things! Different temperatures and different salinities. They even have names for the different water types. The different water types are important for global ocean circulation. And global ocean circulation is important for many people aBoard, for example, because the Gulf Stream keeps the Eastern US and England warmer than they really should be in the winter (given their latitudes).

Anyway, there are noticeable "fronts" between water types in the ocean (just like between air masses on weather maps). Here is some explanation from the most boring book ever written (Descriptive Physical Oceanography by Pickard and Emery)

"Going north from the Antarctic continent the average sea surface temperature increases slowly until a region is reached where a relatively rapid increase of 2 to 3K [Kelvin] occurs. The surface water from south of this region is moving north and sinks when it reaches the region, continuing north below the surface. At the surface therefore the water is converging to this region which...is now called the Antarctic Polar Front (APF)...Continuing north from this APF the temperature rises slowly to a second region where it rises rapidly by about 4K and the salinity by about 0.5 [PSU]. This is referred to as the Subtropical Convergence."

And on it goes like that!

Some ocean factoids so you realize not all seawater is the same:
(1) The mediterranean has the most saline water.
(2) The coldest, densest water on earth (Antarctic Bottom Water) is formed near the coastal shelf of Antarctica.
(3) The Pacific Ocean has slightly less saline water than the Atlantic Ocean.
(4) The second-coldest, densest water is formed in the Labrador Sea or the Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian (usually called the GIN ) seas and is called North Atlantic Deep Water.
(5) There is a so-called "conveyor belt" of ocean circulation in which water moves very slowly all over the world called the Thermohaline Circulation because the driving forces are heat (thermo) and salt (haline). Roughly, water sinks in the Southern Ocean, moves northward in the Pacific and rises near the west coast of North America, continues along the surface north of Australia, south of Africa, joins up with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current but also moves north along the east coast of South and North America, including the Gulf Stream, sinks near Newfoundland and Greenland, and moves along the bottom back to the Southern Ocean.

Man, you guys have been giving my oceanographic muscles a workout this week! Isn't it just the neatest subject?

Edit: Here's a link to a "cartoon" of thermohaline circulation (it's, of course, far more complicated than this looks). http://www.clivar.org/publications/other_pubs/clivar_transp/pdf_files/av_d3_992.pdf

Aren't there also Gyers? (that word is way to short but i can just barely remember the word..)

the one i am thinking of, is giant current of water, that sort of circles.. it move from the Aleutians islands in alaska, down the alaskan pan haddle, continues down the coast all the way to SF, moves out in a giant cicle, till it meets up again with the Aleutians islands ..

Its the current of water that helps make seattle so raining, and SF so foggy, and make the pacific water so cold at the coast line, compared to the Atlantic.

the gulf stream isn't quite a circle (but the atlantic is also not as big an ocean.) And it brings warm tropical waters up the US east coast, Turn just south of NY (but in the summer, scuba divers can find tropical fish off NYC beaches, brought there by the current.) and it make the east coast warmer.. it also bring coconut palm seeds to the coast of ireland, were they sprout, an live for 20 to 30 years, before a cold winter kills them off..

there is an other one of these currents off the coast of peru, all the way out to the galapagoes islands.. and i think there are more, in asia, but... well its far away, and i'm not sure..

and you can see the gulf stream waters.. on a clear calm day, you can actually see different shades of green in the water.. (best from the air) but even when swimming, you can see an eddy of warm water in the ocean.. and feel it as is swirls by!

Yup, helen, you're thinking of "gyres" probably (close on the the spelling!) Those are surface currents and occur on a different timescale than the thermohaline circulation, which occurs on a "millenial" timescale. (And before you ask how on earth they figured that out - because I asked that too - they can track the circulation by observing different chemicals in the water that indicate where it originated.) There are both western and eastern boundary currents, and they are the ones you refer to. (In this case, west and east refer to the ocean basin, not the adjacent continent.) Because of the way the world turns, western boundary currents are more intense than the eastern ones, more closely constrained to the coastline. Western boundary currents move poleward and eastern boundary currents move equatorward. They are:

Western Boundary Currents: Gulf Stream (North Atlantic), Kuroshio (North Pacific), Agulhas (South Indian), Brazil (South Atlantic), East Australia (South Pacific)
Eastern Boundary Currents: California (North Pacific), Canary (North Atlantic), Peru (South Pacific), Benguela (South Atlantic), West Australia (South Indian)

There are also Equatorial Currents: the North and South Equatorial Currents (both going E-W), the Equatorial Counter Current (between them, going W-E), and the Equatorial Undercurrent (beneath them, W-E).

As for the cold upwelling (water from the deeper part of the ocean being drawn to the surface) during the summer on the west coast of NA, that is apparently caused by wind. The primary wind direction during summer in that region is north to south. When wind blows across the water, the net water transport is 90° to the right of the wind direction (Northern Hemisphere) rather than along the wind direction, as you might expect (creepy but true, blame Mr. Ekman for discovering that!) So the north-south wind causes water to move from east to west, and cold water comes up from the deep to take its place as it moves offshore.

i guess swimming in the ocean is a good learning experience!

Swimming in salt water, with waves, is the very best way to swim-- it might also be the most dangerous. two of my cousins and a neighbor (all three good swimmers) have drown in the atlantic. (cousins back in 1969, neighbor, 4 years ago.)

Wow, Bean, this is so cool--thank you! [impressed as all get-out e]
2) The coldest, densest water on earth (Antarctic Bottom Water) is formed near the coastal shelf of Antarctica.
Does anyone know if this affects submarine performance enough that the crews get special training to go here?

Does anyone know if this affects submarine performance enough that the crews get special training to go here?

I don't know about that but I do know another factoid: Apparently Australian ocean research vessels (or is it navy? stales?) aren't allowed to go further south than a certain latitude because that's the point at which the water becomes cold very suddenly (possibly one of the fronts mentioned above), and the hulls of their boats will crack. How's that for cool?

The "Southern Ocean" is not one of the Big 3 but it is important in an oceanographic sense.

Well, color me naive, I've never seen a map with the Southern Ocean labelled. Someone's hiding things from us.

Seems like it would be just as big, or bigger than the Arctic Ocean, so why wouldn't it be a major one? Are there any other "oceans" that have been hiding from me? And also, are the noticable boundaries between the oceans, so that you can actually tell in a boat, that you've gone from one to another?

Apparently Australian ocean research vessels (or is it navy? stales?) aren't allowed to go further south than a certain latitude because that's the point at which the water becomes cold very suddenly (possibly one of the fronts mentioned above), and the hulls of their boats will crack.

And that point was just off Fremantle for Kookaburra II ...

are the noticable boundaries between the oceans, so that you can actually tell in a boat, that you've gone from one to another?

from what i have read, the answers is, sometimes yes..
that why there is a indian ocean, and not just a very big south pacific! at some point the water changed and sailor decided it was different enough..

and at places like the straits of magelean, or cape of good hope, (S. africa) the change is oceans is also marked by rough seas, as the different tempuratures, and densities merge.

Well, color me naive, I've never seen a map with the Southern Ocean labelled. Someone's hiding things from us.

Seems like it would be just as big, or bigger than the Arctic Ocean, so why wouldn't it be a major one? Are there any other "oceans" that have been hiding from me? And also, are the noticable boundaries between the oceans, so that you can actually tell in a boat, that you've gone from one to another?

Most maps are dismal at showing oceanographic features. I'm quite excited that my new atlas shows some ocean depths. (Ocean atlases are neat - the land is at the edge, and you mostly see water - instead of the other way around!) My favourite map, above my desk at the university, shows the oceanic regions adjacent to Canada, with all sorts of detail. And of course labels - the Labrador Sea, Baffin Bay, Hudson and James Bay, the Finnish Cap, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

In my intro. to phys. ocean. notes (which you guys have forced me to go back to at times! ) we name three major oceans, with Arctic and Antarctic as add-ons. In terms of volume, the rough numbers are Atlantic - 25%, Indian - 25%, Pacific - 50%. The small bit which is the two polar oceans just doesn't amount to much in terms of volume (this is most easily appreciated on a globe where you can admire just how stupendously BIG the Pacific is). (Remember, too, that in the middle of the Antarctic Ocean is a big glob of land - though the same can't be said for the Arctic!)

And you probably could tell in a boat when you've switched oceans, if you had some oceanographic instruments! The changes in temperature and salinity can be relatively "sharp" in a global sense but that may still look pretty gradual to someone on a boat. We are pretty small, after all.

And nope, no other hidden oceans. Well, you've always known about the Southern Ocean - you've seen it on maps - you just never gave that region a name!

You want to know another neat thing? Strong currents, combined with the turning earth, cause the water level on one side of the current to be higher than on the other side (depends on direction and current speed). It's a neat problem in intro oceanography. We calculated the difference in water level across a current through the Strait of Florida (can't recall the name right now), it's something like 80 cm (about a yard). Wow!

> "...apparently Japanese fishing captains are not renowned for their ability to listen to sweet reason."

The Oz Navy are regularly called to defend our international waters against fish poachers - many of whom aren't from Japan.

Seizing ships on the high seas is a good business to be in. A couple of years ago the jack tars intercepted and impounded two Norwegian built fishing boats that were helping themselves to our (increasingly rare) Patagonian Tooth Fish. The boats were escorted to Fremantle and forfeited to the Crown (ie the country). The pair of them were worth a total of around $25 million - one was quite new.

Bean mentioned the possibility that our ships may be restricted in how far south they travel for fear of cracking. I hadn't heard of this and, considering the regular jaunts a LONG way south the navy makes to grab fishing boats and round the world yacht race sailors, I'm unsure of its validity. I think there'd definitely be some sort of insurance clause for non-navy vessels what with the danger of icebergs etc.

stales

defend our international waters

Whose international waters?

Dear Faldage,

Welcome to the biggest point of contention in Newfoundland. Here, Canada's sovereignty extends to the so-called "200-mile limit". Unfortunately, that does not include the "nose and tail" of the Grand Banks (you need a map for that one). The Grand Banks is where all the fish live (relatively shallow water - 100m to 200m deep - rich in life). Therefore, foreign fleets come in and trawl beyond our 200-mile limit, and catch all the fish. There is a moratorium on cod fishing on the Grand Banks, because of the collapse of the cod stocks, but it doesn't count past the 200-mile limit. So basically cod stocks (and Newfoundland's economy) will never recover, thanks to the Europeans fishing the hell out of them beyond the 200-mile limit. Unless we extend our sovereignty to include that region. Which looks doubtful. Add to that the furore created by environmental nuts about the seal hunt, and you have a cod stock that will never recover. Real research (not just fishermens' theories based on anecdotal evdience) seems to have shown that there are too many seals to allow the cod stocks to recover. (And no, no one clubs baby seals to death. Blame that misconception on good marketing by the environmental nuts.)

Recently the government has decided to ban ships from countries accused of overfishing (or fishing protected stocks) from docking at any port in Canada. So far they've banned a couple of countries (not sure which ones). I doubt it will do any good.

I used to be skeptical of the claims that Newfoundland was being screwed around by the rest of Canada, but now I'm not so sure. For example, the collapse of the BC logging industry due to the tariff imposed by the US on softwood was the cause for much concern here. However, the EU has a 20% tariff on Canadian (mostly Newfoundland) shrimp and no one in Ottawa much cares. The foreign overfishing thing is just more of the same.

Edit: point of this? I think I see what stales is getting at.