is a bay located in the center of

Nagasaki Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan, mainly located on the island of Kyūshū, although it also includes a number of islands off Kyūshū's northwest coast - including Tsushima and Iki. Nagasaki Prefecture has a population of 1,246,4 ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

in the

East China Sea The East China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean, located directly offshore from East China. China names the body of water along its eastern coast as "East Sea" (, ) due to direction, the name of "East China Sea" is otherwise ...

Geography

The bay measures about north-to-south and east-to-west. The length of the shoreline is about and the surface area is about . This corresponds with about 8% of the total area of the prefecture. Compared to its size, the bay is relatively shallow with an average depth of and maximum depth. The bay is surrounded by land in all directions, thus it appears as an inland sea on maps. The only two connections to the East China Sea are in the north-west: the with a minimum width of and – more eastward – the with a width of . However, these two straits do not directly lead to the open sea, but to the . In between the Hario and Haiki Straits lies Hario Island. West of the Ōmura Bay lies the , and to the south is the foot of . On the eastern shore of the bay is the , on which the city of Ōmura is located. Opposite Ōmura city lies the largest island of the bay: Mishima (箕島), where Nagasaki Airport is located. For this purpose, the island first had to be flattened and reshaped. Along the bay shore lie the following towns, clockwise from the north:

Sasebo is a core city located in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. It is the second-largest city in Nagasaki Prefecture, after its capital, Nagasaki. , the city had an estimated population of 230,873 in 102,670 households, and a population density of 540 per ...

, Kawatana, Higashisonogi, Ōmura, Isahaya, Nagayo, Togitsu,

Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...

and Saikai.

Biology

Because of the geography of the bay there is only a small exchange of water from the bay with the sea. Consequently, the marine life in the bay is different from that in the nearby sea. The bay houses a rare species of

finless porpoise ''Neophocaena'' is a genus of porpoise native to the Indian and Pacific oceans, as well as the freshwater habitats of the Yangtze River basin in China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. ...

, which does not leave the bay during its lifetime.

Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin The Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (''Tursiops aduncus'') is a species of bottlenose dolphin. This dolphin grows to long, and weighs up to . It lives in the waters around India, northern Australia, South China, the Red Sea, and the eastern ...

s and

common dolphin The common dolphin (''Delphinus delphis'') is the most abundant cetacean in the world, with a global population of about six million. Despite this fact and its vernacular name, the common dolphin is not thought of as the archetypal dolphin, wit ...

s may migrate into the basin on unclear regularities. Nagasaki Culture Telecasting Corporation. 2016年10月05日
大村湾にイルカはいるか？
Retrieved on March 13, 2017 Another special inhabitant – sometimes characterised as a

living fossil A living fossil is a Deprecation, deprecated term for an extant taxon that phenotypically resembles related species known only from the fossil record. To be considered a living fossil, the fossil species must be old relative to the time of or ...

– is the

horseshoe crab Horseshoe crabs are arthropods of the family Limulidae and the only surviving xiphosurans. Despite their name, they are not true crabs or even crustaceans; they are chelicerates, more closely related to arachnids like spiders, ticks, and scor ...

species '' Tachypleus tridentatus''. Despite being nearly separated from the sea, and the large cities along its shore, the bay is full of fish. About 60 species of marine animals are fished.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Omura Bay Bays of Kyushu Landforms of Nagasaki Prefecture