Melville Bay

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Melville Bay
Qimusseriarsuaq
In southern Melville Bay

In southern Melville Bay

Waters Baffin Bay ( Atlantic Ocean )
Land mass Greenland
Geographical location 75 ° 45 ′  N , 61 ° 0 ′  W Coordinates: 75 ° 45 ′  N , 61 ° 0 ′  W
Melville Bay (Greenland)
Melville Bay
width 299 km
depth approx. 100 km
Greatest water depth approx. 300 m
Islands Kullorsuaq , Kiatassuaq (Holm Ø), Qullikorsuit , Ryder Øer
Tributaries Sverdrup Glacier , Nordenskjöld Glacier
Extension of Melville Bay

Extension of Melville Bay

MELVILLE BUGT on the US map sheet from 1976

The Melville Bay ( Danish Melville Bugt , Kalaallisut Qimusseriarsuaq , "big Hundeschlittenort") is a large bay of Baffin Bay on the west coast of Greenland between Cape York to the southern tip of Hayes Peninsula in the north and Wilcox Head , the western tip of the island Kiatassuaq ( Danish Holm Ø ), in the south.

Melville Bay is named after Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville .

geography

The coast of Melville Bay is largely uninhabited, the only coastal towns are Savissivik in the north and Kullorsuaq in the south, each on islands of the same name off the Greenland coast.

Interrupted by headlands and offshore islets, the Greenland ice sheet penetrates the Melville Bay in extensive glaciers to the coast, which is one of the largest sources of icebergs in Baffin Bay. 19 large glaciers calve here more than a thousand icebergs with a total volume of 60 km³. From mid-October to late July, the bay is covered by fixed ice, which reaches a maximum thickness of 130 to 180 centimeters. In some summers, the ice cover even remains.

history

Melville Bay was already being used by the Inuit as a hunting ground when William Baffin and Robert Bylot first explored it on the Discovery in 1616 . It was not until 1818 that a European explorer, John Ross , sailed again in their waters. In the spring of 1894, Eivind Astrup (1871–1895) explored and mapped the coast of Melville Bay. A geological investigation and more precise mapping was carried out by Lauge Koch in 1916 as part of Knud Rasmussen's 2nd Thule expedition .

On August 5, 1977, Melville Bay was the scene of a tanker accident . USNS Potomac (T-AO-181) collided with an iceberg on its way to Thule Air Base at position 74 ° 52 'N, 61 ° 13' W and was leaked. 405 tons of heavy oil then ran into the sea.

fauna

Melville Bay is often visited by polar bears who hunt ringed seals on the ice edge . Other seal species that can be found all year round are the walrus and the bearded seal , while hats and harp seals only visit the bay between June and October. From the living here whale species , the Melville Bay is mainly for the Narwhal and Beluga (Beluga) is important.

Breeding colonies of seabirds are in Melville Bay rarer than in other Greenland coasts. However, on the Sabine Islands (Sabine Øer) you will find the largest colonies of the arctic tern and the swallow gull in all of Greenland. The most common seabirds in the area are the black guillemot and the ice gull . The colonies of the polar gull on the Balgoni Islands (Balgoni Øer) represent the northernmost point of their range on Greenland.

natural reserve

Part of Melville Bay and the adjacent Greenland coast with an area of ​​7957 km² (703 km² of ice-free land, 5193 km² of sea and 2061 km² of ice) was declared a nature reserve in 1977 . Driving into its core zone, especially fishing , hunting , collecting eggs, etc. is prohibited. Permanent residents of the former municipalities of Upernavik and Avanersuaq are allowed to hunt beluga, narwhals, polar bears, walruses and seals in the outside area of ​​the protected area.

Mineral oil deposits

It is suspected that there is oil in Melville Bay . The Greenland government has given several oil companies licenses to explore it. Cairn Energy carried out a total of eight test wells in 2010 and 2011, but they did not produce any commercially usable amounts of oil or gas. Other companies such as Statoil , Dong Energy and GDF Suez gave up their licenses for West Greenland by 2014.

Web links

Commons : Melville Bay  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ralph M. Myerson: Melville Bay . In: Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic . tape 2 . Routledge, New York and London 2003, ISBN 1-57958-436-5 , pp. 1274-1276 .
  2. ↑ Sailing Directions (Enroute). Greenland and Iceland (PDF; 6.38 MB). Pub. 181, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Springfield, Virginia 2014, p. 82
  3. ^ A b The Eastern Baffin Bay. A preliminary strategic environmental impact assessment of hydrocarbon activities in the KANUMAS west area (PDF; 12.7 MB), NERI Technical Report no.720, 2009, ISBN 978-87-7073-100-3 , p. 44 (English)
  4. ^ A b Mette-Astrid Jessen: National Parks and Protected Areas: Greenland . In: Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic . tape 2 . Routledge, New York and London 2003, ISBN 1-57958-436-5 , pp. 1387–1391 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ^ Weather, Sea and Ice Conditions in Eastern Baffin Bay, Offshore Northwest greenland. A Review (PDF; 5.14 MB), Mineral Resources Administration for Greenland, 1996, ISBN 87-7478-357-2 , p. 21
  6. ^ Eivind Astrup: With Peary near the Pole , C. Arthur Pearson, London 1898
  7. ↑ Astrup map of Melville Bay from 1894 to www.polarhistorie.no, accessed on July 9, 2013
  8. ↑ Knud Rasmussen: The second Thule expedition to northern Greenland, 1916-1918 . In: Geographical Review . Volume 8, No. 2, 1919, pp. 116-125. doi: 10.2307 / 207633 .
  9. ↑ Peter L. Grose, James S. Mattson, Hanne Petersen: USNS Potomac Oil Spill. Melville Bay, Greenland. August 5, 1977 , Washington, DC, August 1979
  10. ↑ David Boertmann, Nicholas Per Huffeldt: Seabird Colonies in the Melville Bay, Northwest Greenland (PDF; 3.77 MB), Scientific Report from DCE no. 45 2013, ISBN 978-87-92825-82-7
  11. ↑ Benoît Sittler, Johannes Lang: North-east Greenland National Park - the largest national park in the world . In: Reinhard Bocker, Ulrich Hampicke, Werner Konold (eds.): Handbook of nature conservation and landscape care . Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, 2005, doi : 10.1002 / 9783527678471 ( PDF ; 14.3 MB).
  12. ↑ Greenland Home Rule Executive Order concerning Melville Bay Nature Reserve (English; MS Word ; 27 kB), accessed on July 9, 2013
  13. ↑ RPT-Statoil hands back three Greenland exploration licenses . Reuters , January 14, 2015, accessed February 26, 2020.