Queen Maud Gulf

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Queen Maud Gulf
Waters Arctic Ocean
Land mass Mainland North America, King William Island , Victoria Island
Geographical location 68 ° 20 ′  N , 102 ° 0 ′  W Coordinates: 68 ° 20 ′  N , 102 ° 0 ′  W
Map of Queen Maud Gulf
width 290 km
Islands Jenny Lind Island , Melbourne Island , O'Reilly Island , Fitzjames Island , Nordenskiöld Islands , Northpost Island
Tributaries Perry River , Ellice River , Simpson River

The Queen Maud Gulf is an arctic body of water off the north coast of North America . It is located in the Kitikmeot region in the Nunavut territory of Canada .

geography

The gulf is located between mainland America in the south, King William Island in the northeast, and Victoria Island in the northwest. It is connected to the west by the Dease Strait with the Coronation Gulf . To the east, the Simpson Strait leads to the Rasmussen Basin . In the north, the Queen Maud Gulf merges into Victoria Strait .

The Queen Maud Gulf is rich in islands, reefs and shallows. In the north, at the transition to Victoria Strait, are the Royal Geographical Society Islands , south of it, separated by the Markham Strait, the Nordenskiöld Islands with Amundsen Island . To the southeast is Hat Island and just off the coast of the Klutschak Peninsula O'Reilly Island . To the northwest of the Nordenskiöld Islands is Jenny Lind Island , and further west to Melbourne Island .

Cambridge Bay is located at the entrance to Dease Strait on Victoria Island .

history

In 1839 Peter Warren Dease (1788–1863) and Thomas Simpson (1808–1840) sailed through the Queen Maud Gulf. The water owes its name to the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen , who named it after the first Queen of the independent Kingdom of Norway, Maud of Great Britain and Ireland , during the first crossing of the North-West Passage in 1905 . In September 2014 the HMS Erebus , one of the two ships of the Franklin expedition , was found west of O'Reilly Island at a depth of only eleven meters . The other, HMS Terror , was located two years later in Terror Bay , a bay in the Queen Maud Gulf on the southwest coast of King William Island .

natural reserve

The Queen Maud Gulf Migratory Bird Sanctuary has been located on the south coast since 1961 . With an area of ​​62,928 km², it is the largest federal nature reserve in Canada and recognized wetland of international importance according to the Ramsar Convention . BirdLife International designates it as an Important Bird Area (NU009).

literature

  • Donat Pharand, Leonard H. Legault: The Northwest Passage. Arctic Straits . Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht 1984, ISBN 90-247-2979-3 , p. 13-14 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerd Braune: Archaeologists identify the Franklin ship . In: Handelsblatt , October 3, 2014, accessed on May 2, 2016.
  2. ^ Peter Watson: Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt . In: The Guardian , September 12, 2016, accessed September 17, 2016.
  3. ↑ Queen Maud Gulf (Ahiak) Migratory Bird Sanctuary on the website "Environment on Climate Change Canada", accessed on May 3, 2016th
  4. ↑ Queen Maud Gulf on the website "Important Bird Areas in Canada", accessed on May 3, 2016.