Looking at a world map, i notices The Australian Bight for the first time..

and while the dictionary defines it as bow shaped stretch of coastline.. (and the southern coast of ozzie land fits, i don't know of any other bight.. )

more enclosed curves are gulfs (of mexico) and even open curves (gulf of alaska!) over in a asia, an other area, (north of Japan) is a sea..

so are there any other bights? and where?

Dear of troy: Bight of Bengal, Bight of Benin, and, TADA! New York Bight. The USGS site hung on me so I didn't get details of location.

Apart from the Great Australian one, I only know of the Bight of Bonny, which was formerly known as the Bight of Biafra, the curve from Nigeria round to Cameroon. Nigeria renamed it to wipe out memory of the Biafra civil war.

and intoned three times daily on the Radio 4 Shipping Forecast:
Attention all shipping, sea areas..... German Bight.....

In learning to tie knots, text often refers to bight = a loor or slack part in a rope

Bight of Benin, just west of the Bight of Bonny

Bight of the Californias, off-coast from north of Los Angeles southward into Mexico

German Bight, but true, but I think that's only a shipping forecast name. I can't recall seeing it on a map. I believe the forecast area was originally named Heligoland, and renamed German Bight in the 1950s.

P.S. "bight'd"? Monosyllable?

The coastline along the Great Australian Bight is all overhanging rock faces and cliffs, and presumably is direct evidence of when Antarctica was ripped apart from Australia millions of years ago (stales: clarify). Are rocky cliffs common to many/most bights then? The definition merely gives 'a bend in a coastline that forms an open bay' (WordNet, Princeton University Press).

That's the way I like my coastlines; in bight-sized chunks ...

New Zealand has one too - the Taranaki Bight which stretches, effectively, from West Cape to Cape Something-or-other near Wellington. We're not going to be outbighten by anyone ... [nationalistic fervour -e]

flew with speed and grace of a lead balloon.

I got it, Max! My friend and I discovered the Great Australian Bight in Grade 11 when staring at the map of the world after class. We figured out what a bight was from the shape, and then surreptitiously labelled a few more places around the world that we thought looked like they could be bights. Who knows, that map may still be hanging in that classroom.

That was also the year that we (same friend and I) read about New Zealand in an encyclopedia and decided that was where we wanted to live when we grow up. I kid you not!