East Siberian Sea

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Categories: Russian Far East geography stubs | East Siberian Sea | Environment of Russia | Siberia

Map of the East Siberian Sea.

Satellite photo of the New Siberian Islands, with the Laptev Sea on the left and part of the East Siberian Sea shown on the right.

The East Siberian Sea (Russian: Восто́чно-Сиби́рское мо́ре) is a marginal sea in the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the Arctic Cape in the North, the coast of Siberia in the South, the New Siberian Islands in the West and Wrangel Island in the East. This sea is bordering on the Laptev Sea in the West and the Chukchi Sea in the East.

The area of the sea is 361,000 square miles. 70% of it is no deeper than 50m, the deepest point being 155m. The coast is mostly flat in the West (up to the mouth of the Kolyma), and mountainous in the East. Average air temperatures are 0°C to 2°C (4°C in the South) in the summer, reaching -30°C in the winter.

There are no islands in the middle of the East Siberian Sea, and there are only very few islands and island groups in its coastal waters, like Ayon Island and the Medvyezhi island group.

Owing to its extreme northerly location the East Siberian Sea is most of the time covered with ice. The eastern coasts have some elevated terrain and hills, but the eastern coasts are mostlt low-lying and covered with tundra, marshes and multitude of small lakes.

Among the rivers flowing into the East Siberian Sea, the Indigirka, the Alazeya, The Ujandina, the Kolyma, the Rauchua, the Chaun, and the Pegtymel are the most important.

History

This sea was navigated by Russian sea-farers, moving from one river mouth to another in their kochs as early as the 17th century. In 1648 Semyon Dezhnev and Fedot Alekseev sailed the coast of the East Siberian Sea from the Kolyma to river Anadyr in the Bering Sea. Systematic exploration and mapping of the sea and its coasts was carried out by a series of expeditions in 1735-42, 1820-24, 1822, 1909, 1911-14.