Malin Sea

The Malin Sea is a marginal sea of the North-East Atlantic over the Malin Shelf, the continental shelf north of Ireland and southwest of Scotland. It is connected to the Irish Sea by the North Channel, and overlaps the Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland. Of the UK Shipping Forecast areas, the Malin Sea covers most of Malin, and by some definitions extends into Rockall.[1] The area is within the exclusive economic zones of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

The Malin shipping forecast zone approximates the Malin Sea

Extent

Different authorities give different limits for the Malin Sea. The 2002 draft of the International Hydrographic Organization's Limits of Seas publication lists "Malin Sea" as a synonym of Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland.[2] Hardisty defines it separately from the Minches and Sea of the Hebrides, which are parts of the Inner Seas; Dormels interprets Hardisty's definition as corresponding to roughly the southern half of the Inner Seas.[3] Banner defines it as "from the Irish Coast to lat. 56°20′N and from the Continental Shelf break to Kintyre, comprising an area of more than 14,000 km2."[4] Cooper et al. define the Malin Sea's southern limit as from Inishowen to Rathlin Island.[5] The Scottish Government's Marine Atlas divides its coastal waters into habitats, one being "Minches and Malin Sea", defined as "north from the Mull of Kintyre to Cape Wrath incorporating the sea area between the Scottish mainland and the Western Isles".[6]

Name

The name "Malin Sea" comes from Malin Head, the northernmost part of the Inishowen peninsula in northwest Ireland.[7] The name was used in scientific publications from the 1970s,[8][9] and was agreed in 1998 by the signatories of the OSPAR Convention on environmental protection in the North-East Atlantic.[7] The 2001 revised text of the Bonn Agreement on pollution in "the Greater North Sea and its wider Approaches" specifies the Malin Sea among the waters north and west of the North Sea within the remit of the Agreement.[10]

See also

Sources
  • "Chapter 2: Geography, hydrography and climate" (PDF). Region III: Celtic Seas. Quality Status Report 2000 for the North-East Atlantic. OSPAR Commission. 2000.
  • Dormels, Rainer (20–22 August 2010). Practice and policies of the use of binominals, endonyms and exonyms in the naming of sea bodies (PDF). International Seminar on Sea Names (16th ed.). The Hague. Retrieved 29 May 2014.

References
  1. OSPAR 2000, fig. 2.2
  2. "North Atlantic Ocean and its sub-divisions". S-23 Limits of Seas; Draft of 4th edition. International Hydrographic Organization. 2002. pp. 7, fn. Retrieved 30 May 2014.; cited in Dormels 2010
  3. Hardisty, Jack (1990). The British Seas: An Introduction to the Oceanography and Resources of the North-west European Continental Shelf. Routledge. ISBN 9780415035866. cited in Dormels 2010
  4. Banner, Frederick Thomas (1980). The North-West European shelf seas: the sea bed and the sea in motion. Elsevier Scientific. p. 25. ISBN 9780444417343.
  5. Cooper, J.A.G; J.T Kelley; D.F Belknap; R Quinn; J McKenna (2002). "Inner shelf seismic stratigraphy off the north coast of Northern Ireland: new data on the depth of the Holocene lowstand" (PDF). Marine Geology. 186 (3–4): 369–387. Bibcode:2002MGeol.186..369C. doi:10.1016/S0025-3227(02)00311-0. ISSN 0025-3227.
  6. "Scotland's Marine Atlas: Information for The National Marine Plan". Scottish Government. March 2011. Retrieved 29 May 2014.
  7. "This scepter'd isle ... this precious stone set in the, er, Malin Sea". The Independent. 14 June 1998. Retrieved 28 May 2014.
  8. Dobson, M. R.; D. Evans (1974). "Geological structure of the Malin Sea". Journal of the Geological Society. 130 (5): 475–478. Bibcode:1974JGSoc.130..475D. doi:10.1144/gsjgs.130.5.0475. ISSN 0016-7649.
  9. Pendlebury, D. C. (1976). Recent Sediments, Shelly Fauna and Foraminifera of the Malin Sea. Ph.D. thesis. University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
  10. "Text of the Bonn Agreement". Bonn Agreement. pp. Article 2, and Annex Part II. Archived from the original on 5 April 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2014.


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