Vries Strait or Miyabe Line is a

strait A strait is an oceanic landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The surface water generally flows at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in either direction. Most commonly, it is a narrow ocean chan ...

between two main islands of the

Kurils The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; rus, Кури́льские острова́, r=Kuril'skiye ostrova, p=kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva; Japanese: or ) are a volcanic archipelago currently administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in th ...

. It is located between the northeastern end of the island of

Iturup , other_names = russian: Итуру́п; ja, 択捉島 , location = Sea of Okhotsk , coordinates = , archipelago = Kuril Islands , total_islands = , major_islands = , area_km2 = 3139 , length_km = 200 , width_km = 27 , coastline = , highest_moun ...

and the southwestern headland of Urup Island, connecting the

Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk ( rus, Охо́тское мо́ре, Ohótskoye móre ; ja, オホーツク海, Ohōtsuku-kai) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands ...

on the west with the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...

on the east. It has a width of 42 km. The strait is named after

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

explorer

Maarten Gerritsz Vries Maarten Gerritszoon Vries, or Fries, also referred to as de Vries, (18 February 1589, Harlingen, Netherlands – late 1647, at sea near Manila) was a 17th-century Dutch cartographer and explorer, the first Western European to leave an account of ...

, the first recorded European to explore the area in 1643.

References

Straits of the Kuril Islands Maritime history of the Dutch East India Company {{SakhalinOblast-geo-stub