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Gulf of Mexico |
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| The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin
and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely
surrounded by the North American continent. It is
bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the
Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and
south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. The U.S.
states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and
Texas border the Gulf on the north, which are often
referred to as the "Third Coast" in comparison with the
U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts, or sometimes the
"south coast", in juxtaposition to the Great Lakes
region being the "north coast." One of the gulf's seven
main areas is the Gulf of Mexico basin. |
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| The Gulf of Mexico formed
approximately 300 million years ago as a result of plate
tectonics. The Gulf's basin is roughly oval and is
approximately 810 nautical miles wide and floored by
sedimentary rocks and recent sediments. It is connected
to part of the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida
Straits between the U.S. and Cuba, and with the
Caribbean (with which it forms the American
Mediterranean Sea) via the Yucatán Channel between
Mexico and Cuba. With the narrow connection to the
Atlantic, the Gulf experiences very small tidal ranges.
The size of the Gulf basin is approximately 1.6 million
km2. Almost half of the basin is shallow continental
shelf waters. The basin contains a volume of roughly
2,500 quadrillion liters. |
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