North Sea
Map of the North Sea.
Area	575 000 km 2
Depth	700 m (max.)
Type	Epicontinental sea
Location	Atlantic Ocean
Contact	56 N 4 E / 56, 4 56 N 4 E / 56, 4
Coastal state (s)	United Kingdom France Belgium Netherlands Germany Denmark Norway Sweden
Geolocation on the map: Europe
change

The North Sea is an epicontinental sea of the Atlantic Ocean , north-western Europe , which covers an area of approximately 575 000 km .

The countries bordering the North Sea are:

• the United Kingdom (Isle of Great Britain and the Islands of Shetland and Orkney ) to the west,
• the France and Belgium to the south,
• the Netherlands , the German , the Denmark , the Sweden and Norway to the east.

It communicates with:

• the English Channel by the Straits of Dover in the south-west

The maritime boundary between the geodetic North Sea and English Channel is bounded by the following items: Item British Land: South Foreland (North of Dover): 51 08'25 "N 1 22'16" E Point Land French : Walde Lighthouse (north of Calais): 50 59'40 "N 1 54'55" E

• the Baltic Sea through the Skagerrak or the Kiel Canal to the east,
• the Atlantic Ocean ( Norwegian Sea ) to the north.

The North Sea is an area of strong sea transit operating oil and fishing. The North Sea and its coast are a rich natural environment, but the marine pollution , the overfishing , the oil industry ( platforms offshore) and tourism are sources of threats to the future. It is downstream from the center of industrial Europe, the estuary of the Rhine to the Norwegian fjords and cliffs of northern Britain. Sector Channel / Southern North Sea, including the Dover Strait is considered representative of shallow seas mgatidales, characterized by a strong current and water is very turbid (due to currents and tidal phenomena of reversal), which made a particular ecological zone, but also vulnerable to maritime risk because of intense maritime traffic (merchant and passenger).

Northwards from latitude 53 24 ', in general, the bottom of the North Sea down irregularly. To the south it slopes to the Straits of Dover. The submarine ridge is shown in blue in this map. The North Sea has some deep areas of more than 100 m. The depths encountered in its southern part is in the order of 40 m. This area is composed of numerous shoals or banks likely ice ages at the option of shifting tides. These are important maritime hazards. To the east of Britain , the vast plateau of moraine Dogger Bank rises to -15 to -30 m, forming and a region full of fish.

The greatest depths are in the pit along the Norwegian coast of the Norwegian Sea Norway to Oslo. Large 25 to 35 km, is 300 m deep off Bergen, and up to 700 m in the Skagerrak.

There are also deep in the western part of the North Sea, as the hole of the devil (Devil's Hole) off the Edinburgh to over 460 m, or some sliced off the bay The Wash ( The Wash ). These corridors could have been formed by the rivers during the last glaciation. Indeed, at this time of glaciation, the level of the North Sea was lower than the current level ( regression ). The floods have so eroded parts then discovered that the sea covers today ( transgression ). What is more likely that they are remnants of tunnel valleys kept open by tidal currents.

The northern shores of the North Sea are jagged, stripped by glaciers of the ice ages , while the southern part are sweet: covered with debris or deposited directly by glacial ice or redeposited by the sea in Norwegian mountains plunge the sea, giving birth, north of Stavanger to fjords and archipelagos with profound multiple islands and islets. South of Stavanger, softens the coast, the islands become fewer. The eastern coast of Scotland has also torn this pace, but less marked than in Norway. From Flamborough Head (Flamborough Head), North-East of England, the cliffs are shrinking, their material Moraine, less durable, erode more easily, the ribs are more rounded contours. Holland, Belgium and the East of England (East Anglia), the coastline becomes low and swampy. The east and southeast of the North Sea (the Wadden Sea ) are mainly sandy and straight, including Belgium and Denmark.

The rich waters

seal

The waters of the North Sea are different from others. A complex system of tides and currents bring rich waters of the Atlantic by the English Channel by creating environments that nurture a diverse variety of animals. Thirty species of cetaceans living there, and six species of seal breed on two of his ribs, the gray seal and sea-calf.

Over 170 species of fish, including sharks , the haddock , the cod , the mackerel and herring in the waters of the gray North Sea. The rays , flat fish, the eels and angler fish are lurking on the bottom, and a myriad of invertebrates such as lobsters , sponges , sea urchins , crabs and octopuses.

On shallow, kelp forests are home to barnacles , mussels , sand eel and sprat.

Background

The ecosystems of this area, including monitoring by OSPAR show signs of strong transformations related to fishing pressures, the terrigenous nutrients, global warming and cyclical phenomena such as the North Atlantic Oscillation , climate change periodic large-scale natural space measured by the NAO index appears to correlate well with such periodic variations in some communities of microalgae in the Belgian coastal area (SE North Sea ^Economy

Oil and Gas

In 1958, geologists have discovered a natural gas field in Slochteren in the Dutch province of Groningen and it was suspected that more fields were lying under the North Sea. However, at this stage, the rights to exploit natural resources on the high seas were still in dispute.

Test drilling began in 1966 and in 1969, Phillips Petroleum Company discovered the Ekofisk oil field (now Norwegian), which at that time was one of the 20 largest in the world and has proven to be valuable by low-sulfur oil. Commercial exploitation began in 1971 with the tankers and after 1975 by a pipeline first to Cleveland, England, then a second after 1977 to Emden, Germany. Since the discovery of oil in the North Sea in the 1970s, nicknames of Aberdeen have been Oil Capital of Europe or the Energy Capital of Europe.

The exploitation of oil reserves in the North Sea began just before the 1973 oil crisis, and rising international oil prices have made large investments needed for extraction much more attractive. In the years 1980 and 1990, new discoveries of large deposits of oil followed. Although production costs are relatively high, the quality of crude, political stability in the region, and proximity to major markets in Western Europe made the North Sea an important oil-producing region. The greatest humanitarian catastrophe in the North Sea oil industry has been the destruction of offshore oil platform Piper Alpha in 1988 during which 167 people lost their lives. A major eruption in 1977 in the Ekofisk field resulted in an unimpeded flow of oil into the sea for a week before it is clogged, the estimates of the quantity of oil discharged into the environment vary between 86,000 and 202,380 barrels (approximately 10,000 to 30,000 tons, depending on the density of the oil). In contrast, fires on the Piper Alpha burned most oil on board and released wells disrupted.

With more than 450 oil platforms, North Sea is the largest region in the world for offshore drilling. The British side of the North Sea has the largest number of platforms, followed by Norwegians, Dutch and Danish. Besides the Ekofisk oil field, the Statfjord oil field is also noted as causing the first gas pipeline to Norway. The largest natural gas field in the North Sea, Troll Field, lies in the Trough at a depth of 345 meters (1100 feet). A giant platform was necessary for access. The German section has only two oil platforms, most of them is the Mittelplate, and Germany is the country bordering with the least developed extraction.

In 1999, extraction reached a record level with an output of nearly 6 million barrels (950,000 m) of crude oil and 280,000,000 m (999,000,000 cubic feet) of natural gas per day. All major oil companies have been involved in the extraction. But in recent years, large companies like Shell and BP have ceased mining and since 1999, the amount extracted continuously decreased due to the depletion of reserves.

The price of Brent Crude, one of the first types of oil extracted from the North Sea, is used today as a standard for comparing prices for crude oil from the rest of the world.

Renewables

Southern North Sea, has no tides or waves or currents are easy to exploit because of the nature of funds and high traffic emerging from Dover. Offshore wind projects that have emerged in the 1990s in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais were delayed. Large wind projects started to the north and north-west since the 1990s when the prevailing winds are strong and regular, England and Denmark in particular have used the coastal waters to produce energy.
The Blyth offshore wind farm (UK, 2000) preceded that of the Danish coast (2002 near Horns Rev ) and others have been commissioned (and which OWEZ Scroby Sands) or are planned (eg 2 parks planned for 2012 subject to grant concessions sought by the Belgian Electrabel ; Blue4PowerI north of Bligh Bank, 60 km from the coastline and Blue4PowerII 20 km south of previous betweenthe Bligh Bank and the Bank zonder Naam).
Some offshore wind farms have met resistance, for example in Germany, about the environmental impacts (collisions with birds, underwater disturbances during the laying of foundations ..). The distance to consumers leads to energy losses of transmission.

Tidal power is not forgotten: First two large deep-water turbines are on order for Talisman Energy in Scotland, 25 km (15 miles) at sea near the Beatrice oil field. (88 m (290 feet) high and 63 m long blades, or 210 feet, which should produce 5 MW each, making it the largest project in the world. The Norwegian coast and the intersection with the Irish Sea might be considered in order to harness the energy of waves and / or sea currents.

The first attempts at power station using the waves were born in 2003-2005 in Denmark. The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) based at Stromness Orkney (Scotland) is a research body supported by the government. He built a test site at Billia Croo at sea on the Orkney mainland and a test station for the use of tidal energy on the nearby island of Eday. A small pilot plant for the production of blue energy exists in Trondheim (Norway).

The consequences of overfishing and pollution

Trawler wharf

Sunset Dorum (Germany)

For centuries, the North Sea has fed the people who lived along the coast. But in recent years, its natural resources were subject to new pressures. The overfishing has decimated the herring and cod. In 1983 , fishing quotas have been set, but not enough to protect the resource that is removed faster than it can renew itself: experts now believe that we should divide the quota by two or more.

Diseased fish, infected or malformed form an increasing share of the catch. We think that this is due to pollution. We rejected the English Channel / North Sea many marine debris , including old ammunition and radioactive waste that will remain in the ecosystem for centuries. Hydrocarbons from tank cleaning at sea or tanker accidents remain a serious threat to wildlife.

Each year, Britain sent 250,000 tons of nitrogen which eutrophisent the North Sea by air. But the biggest pollution comes from the land, brought by rivers or drains.

The coastline threatened

Sylt (Germany)

Belgian coast

The coasts of the North Sea are very varied, from rocky shores to salt marshes and mudflats of estuaries, beaches lined with dunes. mudflats and estuaries are important feeding areas for waders such as redshank and dunlin , and ducks and geese. When the tide goes out with the tide, all come to feed on crustaceans and molluscs hidden in the mud.

Despite efforts to protect these habitats are vulnerable and threatened. Fragile marshes are fragmented, drained and locally densely constructed huts and hunting ponds (sustainable sources of lead and lead poisoning avian ) eutrophic or affected by sediments contaminated, possibly original port. The plankton blooms , which of Phaeocystis or Pseudonitzchia delicatissima are increasingly important as an indicator perhaps comparable to that of green tides in Brittany or invasions of jellyfish in the Mediterranean;

For two centuries, many wetlands back coastal shores of the North Sea disappeared, drained and reclaimed for agriculture, industry and tourism. Have been transformed into agricultural land 40 000 hectares of the Wadden Sea , an area which hosts 1,000 species of plants and animals, and important spawning sites. Between 1935 and 1982, 48% of estuaries in the Thames , Medway and Swale have been enhanced and 90% of the Tees estuary have been transformed into an industrial zone. Those that remain have sometimes severely degraded.
All these regions were used as wintering sites for shorebirds and waterfowl. Others were drained and destroyed for larger ports, such as around Rotterdam.

The birds deprived of these habitats may move but are then faced with ecological niches already occupied, and they are unlikely to find other suitable sites, which condemns them to die or have little chance of being able to reproduce.

The IPOAs

Every three years, the conference of the North Sea meets the eight riparian states ( Belgium , France , United Kingdom , Norway , Sweden , Germany , Denmark and the Netherlands ), but many of the goals have never been achieved. The UK is the country most polluter and, alone, continues to dump its industrial waste despite the 1987 agreement applicable end of 1989.

In 1990, the conference decided that the disposal of sewage sludge was gradually cease by 1995 and the incineration of waste into the sea to cease in 1993. Air pollution would drop by 50%, while and studied the effects of intensive fishing.

The organization Greenpeace launched in the 1980s several protest campaigns against the dumping of toxic wastes in the North Sea. Approved by the Conference of the North Sea and the European parliament, demanding that she cease all pollution by 2000. But the goal is not reached until the industry continue to create toxic byproducts. We must shift to methods of clean production to save the North Sea and its wildlife.

Major ports in the North Sea

Traditional neighborhood in Stavanger (Norway).

• Norway: Bergen , Stavanger , Kristiansand.
• Denmark: Esbjerg.
• Germany: Hamburg , Bremerhaven , Wilhelmshaven , Emden.
• Netherlands: Lauwersoog , Delfzijl , Eemshaven , Den Helder , Amsterdam , Scheveningen , Hoek van Holland , Rotterdam , Flushing.
• Belgium: Antwerp , Bruges-Zeebrugge , Ostend , Nieuport. failure ; kokside
• France: Dunkerque , Calais.
• England: London , Harwich , Felixstowe , Kingston upon Hull , Tyneside.
• Scotland: Edinburgh , Aberdeen.

Sources

References

Additions

Related articles

• Channel (sea)
• Atlantic Ocean
• List of fauna of the North Sea
• List of fish from the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea
• OSPAR
• Greenpeace
• Eutrophication

External Links

• (En) Site of the OSPAR Commission

• Portal of the maritime world

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