The Türkmenbaşy Gulf or Türkmenbaşy Aýlagy or Türkmenbaşy Bay ( tk, Türkmenbaşy aýlagy, russian: залив Туркменбашы) is a
bay of the
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia ...
in the coast of
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the sout ...
.
With the
Türkmenbaşy Peninsula to the north and the
Cheleken Peninsula to the south, the gulf extends westwards into the sea for 46 km and has an 18 km wide mouth. At its northwest corner are the Bala-Ishem salt marshes which mark the mouth of the dried-up
Uzboy River
The Uzboy (sometimes rendered Uzboj) was a distributary of the Amu Darya which flowed through the northwestern part of the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan until the 17th century, when it abruptly dried up, eliminating the agricultural population t ...
. It became part of the
Hazar Nature Reserve in 1968 and was designated as a
Ramsar site in 2008.
Among the animals in the bay the Krasnovodsk herring ''(
Alosa braschnikowi nirchi)'' and the
Caspian seal
The Caspian seal (''Pusa caspica'', syn. ''Phoca caspica'') is one of the smallest members of the earless seal family and unique in that it is found exclusively in the brackish Caspian Sea. It lives along the shorelines, but also on the many roc ...
deserve mention.
[Igor S. Zonn, Aleksey N Kosarev, Michael H. Glantz & Andrey G. Kostianoy, ''The Caspian Sea Encyclopedia'', p. K 256]
Cartography
In 18th century maps of the Caspian Sea the gulf was known as 'Balkan Gulf' or 'Balchan Gulf' and was assumed to be much deeper. It was first accurately cartographed by
Fedor Ivanovich Soimonov during the
1719 Caspian Expedition
Events
January–March
* January 8 – Carolean Death March begins: A catastrophic retreat by a largely-Finnish Swedish- Carolean army under the command of Carl Gustaf Armfeldt across the Tydal mountains in a blizzard kills around 3,7 ...
which surveyed the Caspian Sea from 1719 to 1727.
The bay was later known as 'Krasnovodsk Gulf' or 'Krasnovodsk Bay', but it changed its name when the city at its shores changed its name from Krasnovodsk to
Türkmenbaşy.
[Словарь географических названий СССР / ГУГК, ЦНИИГАиК. — 2-е изд., перераб. и доп. — М. : Недра, 1983. — С. 126.]
See also
*
Türkmenbaşy
References
External links
Caspian Sea Biodiversity''Overview of oil and natural gas in the Caspian Sea region'' Last Updated: August 26, 2013
Bodies of water of Turkmenistan
Bays of the Caspian Sea
Ramsar sites in Turkmenistan
{{Turkmenistan-geo-stub