See also: Barents

The sea of Barents is the Mer of the Arctic Ocean which is located at the north of the Norway and of the Western Russia. It is named according to the navigator Dutch Willem Barents. It of a plate rather not very deep (with a 230 m depth on average), is delimited by the Mer of Norway in the west, the Norwegian island of Svalbard in the North-West, and the Archipel S François-Joseph and Nova Zembla in the North-East and east.

In the south of the sea of Barents the ports of Mourmansk (Russia) and of Vardø are (Norway), which remains free of Glace during all the year thanks to the Atlantic Dérive northern relatively hot, which made of them strategic sites for the national marines. The whole sea is more or less completely free of ice in September. The territory of the Finland extended to the coast from the sea until the Guerre from Winter; the port of Petsamo was then the only free Finnish port of ice during the winter.

There are three principal types of masses of water in the sea of Barents: warm water and saltworks of the Atlantic Ocean (temperature >3ºC, salinity >35) of the Atlantic northern drift, Arctic water cold (temp. <0ºC, salinity <35), and of warm water of the coasts, not very saltworks (temp. >3ºC, salinity <34,7). There exists a face where Atlantic and Arctic water converges, the polar face. In the west of the sea (close to the Island to the Bears), this face is determined by the topography of the bottom and is consequently rather stable year by year, while in the east (close to the Nova Zembla, it can be rather diffuse and changes position every year.

The sea has a very active biology compared with the seas of a Latitude similar due to the Atlantic northern Dérive. The spring explosion of the Phytoplancton can start rather early close to the beginning of the ice because the water of the ice melting creates a stable layer of fresh water above the sea water saltworks. The phytoplankton is eaten by the Zooplancton ( Calanus finmarchicus , Calanus glacialis , Calanus hyperboreus , Oithona , and by the Krill. The zooplancton is in its turn eaten by the Atlantic cod, the polar cod, the capelan, the Baleine S, and the Little auk. The capelin in particular is very important because prey of the cod, the seal of Greenland, and the birds of sea like the guillemot of Troïl, the guillemot of Brünnich. The fisheries of the sea of Barents, in particular that of cod, are very important for Norway and Russia.

During the Cold war, the Severny flood ( Float of north ) of the Soviet Marine used the south of the sea like naval Bastion of its Sous-marin S with Missile S, a strategy that the Russian government continuous. The contamination of the sea of Barents by nuclear waste coming from the nuclear reactors of the Russian navy is an ecological problem alarming. This problem is multiplied by ten by the economic difficulties of the Russian State since the fall of the the USSR which make insufficient the maintenance of the ships and submarines as seem to indicate it the accidents and shipwrecks of the Années 2000:

• shipwreck of the submarine Koursk (August 12th 2000)
• shipwreck of the Russian submarine K-159 disarmed and towed towards a building site of disassembling (August 30th 2003)
• damages serious Russian cruiser missile launcher with nuclear propulsion Pierre-the-Large (Piotr Veliki) (March 24th 2004)

The search for Pétrole in the sea started in the Années 1970. Discoveries of layers were made sides Russian and Norwegian. The first to start production will be that of Snøhvit in territory of Norway. Largest is that of Shtokman, which belongs to the Russians. One disputes the border between Norway and Russia; Norwegians preferring the line of centers and the Russians a sector based on the Meridian S.

See too

Internal bonds

• Arctic Ocean
• Norway · Russia

External bonds

• EuroArctic, news of the area written by the media Norwegian, Swedish and Russian
• Information on the biodiversity and the ecology of the sea