The Bay of Greifswald
[''Utrata Fachwörterbuch: Geographie - Englisch-Deutsch/Deutsch-Englisch'']
by Jürgen Utrata (2014). Retrieved 10 Apr 2014. or Greifswald Bodden
(german: Greifswalder Bodden) is a basin in the southwestern
Baltic Sea, off the shores of
Germany in the
state of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. With an area of 514 km², it is the largest
Bodden of the German Baltic coast.
[Ulrich Schiewer, Ecology of Baltic coastal waters, Springer, 2008, p.87, ]
To the west is the island of
Rügen; to the southeast, the island of
Usedom; to the east, the
Bay of Pomerania, and to the south, the
German mainland. The bay is also joined to the Baltic Sea through the
Strelasund, a narrow
sound separating Rügen from the mainland. The bay's northern end is sometimes called the ''Rügischer Bodden''.
The bay itself has a heavily indented coastline, making it a bay of bays. The headlands of Mönchgut (in east Rügen) and Zudar (in south Rügen) – the former actually being made up of several
peninsula
A peninsula (; ) is a landform that extends from a mainland and is surrounded by water on most, but not all of its borders. A peninsula is also sometimes defined as a piece of land bordered by water on three of its sides. Peninsulas exist on all ...
e – subdivide the bay into many smaller bays. The bay's main port is
Greifswald. Amongst the islands in the east of the ''bodden'' are
Vilm,
Koos,
Riems and the former island of
Stubber
The Great or ''Große'' Stubber is a stony sandbank that dries out at low water located in the eastern part of the German Baltic Sea lagoon known as the Greifswalder Bodden or Bay of Greifswald. The name ''Stubber'' goes back to the Slavic: ''St ...
, now a sandbank.
The Bay of Greifswald is quite shallow, with an average depth of 5.6 m, and a maximum depth of 13.5 m.
[ Its water is brackish rather than briny owing to inflow from rivers, and the Baltic Sea's complex hydrography (saltier water is generally found only at greater depths there). The average salinity is at 7 to 8 psu,][Reinhard Lampe in Hans Heinrich Blotevogel, Jürgen Ossenbrügge, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geographie, ''"lokal verankert, weltweit vernetzt": 2. Deutscher Geographentag, Hamburg, 2.-9. Oktober 1999 Tagungsbericht und wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen'', Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000, p.123, ] ranging from 5.3 and 12.2 psu.[
Before ]German reunification
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
in 1990, the Bay of Greifswald was a public List of water sports, watersports venue, unlike most of East Germany's Baltic coast. The local geography made it easy to keep watch over the bay, thereby thwarting those who thought to use it to flee the country. The place outside the Warsaw Pact nearest the bay was the Denmark, Danish island of Bornholm, more than 100 km away.
File:GreifswalderBodden.png, Map
File:Caspar David Friedrich 017.jpg, ''Flachlandschaft am Greifswalder Bodden'' (Flat Landscape on the Bay of Greifswald), Caspar David Friedrich, about 1830-1834
File:Südlicher Strelasund bei Tremt.jpg, The Bodden seen from Sundhagen
See also
* Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline project
References
{{Authority control
Bay of Greifswald,
Greifswald
Bays of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Greifswald