Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Gulf of Maine
Summary
The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America. It is bounded by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and by Cape Sable Island at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast. The gulf includes the entire coastlines of the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Maine, as well as Massachusetts north of Cape Cod, and the southern and western coastlines of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, respectively.
The gulf was named for the adjoining English colonial Province of Maine, which was in turn likely named by early explorers after the province of Maine in France. Massachusetts Bay, Penobscot Bay, Passamaquoddy Bay, and the Bay of Fundy are all arms of the Gulf of Maine.
The Gulf of Maine is a roughly rectangular depression with a surface area of around , enclosed to the west and north by the North American mainland and communicating with the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. The region's glaciation by the Laurentide Ice Sheet stripped sedimentary soil away from the coastline, leaving a shore that is predominantly rocky and scenic, lacking the sandy beaches found to the south along the Eastern Seaboard. The only significant coastal developments are located in the Boston, Portsmouth, Portland and Saint John metropolitan areas.
The underwater features of the seabed sculpted during the lower sea levels of the ice ages make the gulf a semi-enclosed sea bounded to the south and east by underwater banks. Georges Bank in particular, on its southern end, shelters the gulf from the Gulf Stream. Gulf of Maine waters are more strongly influenced by the Labrador Current, making the gulf waters significantly colder and more nutrient-rich than those found to the south. Undersea valleys in the central basin can reach depths of , while undersea mountains rise up from the sea floor, almost reaching the surface in some locations, or even exceeding it, creating islands.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.