In the world there are 57 seas that are distributed around the 5 continents. The division of the seas is as follows; on the European continent there are 18, 14 in America, 21 in Asia, 4 in Africa and 8 in Oceania.
If you do the sum of all these seas you will surely be surprised that 65 comes out and not 57; we have not been wrong. The fact is that there are some seas that are located between two or more continents, which is why they appear in the list of each of those continents. The Mediterranean Sea, for example, bathes the European, African and Asian coast.
Now that you know how many seas are there in the worldKeep reading this OneHowTo article to find out everything about these large bodies of water.
Despite being one of the smallest continents by extension, Europe is the second continent with the most seas. In total, there are 18 seas in Europe:
- Mediterranean Sea
- Black Sea
- North Sea
- Baltic Sea
- Tyrrhenian Sea
- Adriatic sea
- Ionian sea
- Aegean Sea
- Alboran Sea
- Wadden Sea
- English Channel
- Sea of ireland
- Celtic Sea
- Cantabrian Sea
- Barents Sea
- White sea
- Marmara sea
- Sea of Azov.
Along the American coast we can bathe in up to 14 different seas, these seas are the following:
- Caribbean Sea
- Sea of Cortez
- Bering sea
- Argentine Sea
- Sea Beaufort
- Sea of Ansenuza
- Hudson bay
- Chukotka Sea
- The great lakes
- Chilean Sea
- Sea of Grau
- Greenland Sea
- Labrador Sea
- Sargasso Sea.
Asia is the continent of the world where there are more seas, on its coasts we have a total of 21 seas:
- Dead Sea
- Red Sea
- Caspian Sea
- Arabian Sea
- Aral Sea
- Yellow Sea
- Mar de Banda
- Bering sea
- Andaman Sea
- Celebes Sea
- East China Sea
- South China Sea
- Philippine Sea, Sea of Japan
- Sea Kara
- Mar Laptev
- Sea of Okhotsk
- White sea
- Seto Inland Sea
- East Siberian Sea
- Sulu Sea.
Despite its size, Africa is only bathed by 4 seas, although the Alboran Sea is not really a sea, but rather a Mediterranean submarine. The list of seas in Africa is as follows:
- Mediterranean Sea
- Alboran Sea
- Red Sea
- Arabian Sea
Between the Pacific and Indian waters that surround Oceania we count up to 8 seas:
- Arafura Sea
- Timor Sea
- Solomon’s sea
- Bismarck Sea
- Coral sea
- Philippine Sea
- Halmahera Sea
- Tasman Sea
Not all seas are the same, depending on their characteristics, formation and location, we are talking about three different types of seas. Below we will explain the different types of seas that there are:
Littoral sea
The so-called littoral seas or coastal seas are gulfs of greater size and very open. They are not separated from the oceans by any type of submarine threshold, however, they differ from them by a shallower depth, by having much wider tides and because the temperature of their waters is higher.
There are many coastal seas in the world, two examples can be the Oman Sea in the Indian Ocean or the Beafort Sea in the Arctic.
If you do not know the differences between sea and ocean, you can learn it in the following article.
Continental sea
We call the continental sea that type of sea that is situated completely between two continents. They are not separated from the ocean, but they communicate with it, but they do so through a strait that causes exchanges not to be many, causing large differences in salinity and temperature. In these types of seas, the tides are of such low amplitude that in most cases they go unnoticed.
The most important continental sea is the Mediterranean, which is also the second largest in the world, so are the Black Sea and Japan.
Sea closed
Closed seas, also called inland seas, are located in large endorheic depressions. These are not really seas, but they are very extensive lakes, although their water can be very salty. Some have communicated with the ocean at some point in their history, although not all. Some of the most important closed seas are the Caspian Sea, the Dead Sea or the American Great Lakes.