A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean , a lake , or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf , sea , sound , or bight . A cove is a small, circular bay with a narrow entrance. A fjord is an elongated bay formed by glacial action. The term embayment is also used for related features , such as extinct bays or freshwater environments.
6-554: Møllebukta (Mill Bay) is a small bay with a sandy beach in the inner part of the Hafrsfjorden in the borough of Madla in the city of Stavanger in the southwestern part of the large Stavanger Municipality in Rogaland county, Norway . It is named after the Møllebekken creek which flows into the bay on the west side of the beach area. The area historically was utilized for running
12-428: A corn mill . A park was established in the bay in the 18th century. The beach has a length of about 100 metres (330 ft) and it is popular for swimming and sunbathing. The bronze sculpture Sverd i fjell by Fritz Røed is located at the nearby Mølleberget rock on the east side of the beach. This Rogaland location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Bay A bay can be
18-499: A variety of shoreline characteristics as other shorelines. In some cases, bays have beaches , which "are usually characterized by a steep upper foreshore with a broad, flat fronting terrace". Bays were significant in the history of human settlement because they provided easy access to marine resources like fisheries . Later they were important in the development of sea trade as the safe anchorage they provide encouraged their selection as ports . The United Nations Convention on
24-576: The estuary of a river, such as the Chesapeake Bay , an estuary of the Susquehanna River . Bays may also be nested within each other; for example, James Bay is an arm of Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada . Some large bays, such as the Bay of Bengal and Hudson Bay, have varied marine geology . The land surrounding a bay often reduces the strength of winds and blocks waves . Bays may have as wide
30-497: The Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in the coastline, whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain land-locked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation, however, shall not be regarded as a bay unless its area is as large as (or larger than) that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across
36-454: The mouth of that indentation — otherwise it would be referred to as a bight . There are various ways in which bays can form. The largest bays have developed through plate tectonics . As the super-continent Pangaea broke up along curved and indented fault lines, the continents moved apart and left large bays; these include the Gulf of Guinea , the Gulf of Mexico , and the Bay of Bengal , which
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