78 BIOLOGY OF THE SEAS OF THE U.S.S.R. 



Table 28 



Depth Depth as % Area 



m of total sea km 2 



Total 100 1,360,000 



continent and Bear Island where a deep trench enters from the west with 

 three branches leading off to the northeast, east and southeast. Secondly, 

 depths below 400 m project into the northern part of the Sea in two tongues : 

 the western between Queen Victoria Land and Franz Joseph Land, and the 

 eastern northwards from Novaya Zemlya. However, there is no communi- 

 cation between the three trenches and they are divided from each other by 

 depths of less than 300 m. Further in the centre of the Sea there is a wide 

 depression which extends between the 76° and 71° parallels and the 35° and 

 47° meridians and has depths of over 400 m. In the centre of the Sea there are 

 two large shallows which partly divide these depressions : one is the central 

 elevation of the Barents Sea with depths of 150 to 200 m, and the other to the 

 north of the Persei elevation with depths of 100 to 200 m. Southwest of the 

 Persei elevation lies the wide Bear Island-Cape Nadezhda shallow (or Spits- 

 bergen Bank) with depths of less than 100 m, which in the north becomes the 

 coastal shallows of Spitsbergen. In the east and southeast a wide shallow 

 encircles Novaya Zemlya and the Kolguev-Kanin region and extends north- 

 wards from the Murman coast (the Murman shallow). There is another shal- 

 low in the southeastern part of the Sea ; although small it has great commer- 

 cial importance — Gusinaya Bank (between the 71° and 72° parallels and the 

 44° and 48° meridians). 



Although all these depths vary by no more than 300 m and the angle of the 

 slope of the floor is usually negligibly small (a fraction of one degree), never- 

 theless all aspects of the conditions of the Barents Sea are closely linked with 

 its bottom contour — the distribution of currents, the nature of its bed, the 

 course of the tidal stream, the polar front phenomena and through the system 

 of horizontal and vertical circulation of water the distribution of densities of 

 bottom population and the concentration of commercial fish; all this in the 

 final analysis is primarily determined by the bottom topography. 



Currents 



A powerful stream of Atlantic waters, skirting the North Cape, enters the 

 Barents Sea from the west through the broad passage (128 km across) be- 

 tween the North Cape and Bear Island (Fig. 22). 



Warm Atlantic waters penetrate into the Barents Sea not only from the 

 west, to the south and north of Bear Island, but also from the north through 

 the straits off the eastern and western coasts of Franz Joseph Land. 



