he Sea of Okhotsk covers an area of 1,583,000 square kilometres (611,000 sq mi),

with a mean depth of 859 metres (2,818 ft) and a maximum depth of 3,372 metres
(11,063 ft). It is connected to the Sea of Japan on either side of Sakhalin: on the
west through the Sakhalin Gulf and the Gulf of Tartary; on the south, through the
La Prouse Strait.

In winter, navigation on the Sea of Okhotsk becomes difficult, or even impossible,

due to the formation of large ice floes, because the large amount of freshwater
from the Amur River lowers the salinity which results in raising the freezing point
of the sea. The distribution and thickness of ice floes depends on many factors:
the location, the time of year, water currents, and the sea temperatures.

Depths
With the exception of Hokkaido, one of the Japanese home islands, the sea is
surrounded on all sides by territory administered by the Russian Federation.

Extent[edit]
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Sea of
Okhotsk as follows:[2]

On the Southwest. The Northeastern and Northern limits on the Japan Sea [In La
Perouse Strait (Sya Kaiky). A line joining Sni Misaki and Nishi Notoro Misaki
(4555'N). From Cape Tuik (5145'N) to Cape Sushcheva].
On the Southeast. A line running from Nosyappu Saki (Cape Noshap, 4323'N) in the
Island of Hokusy (Yezo) through the Kuril or Tisima Islands to Cape Lopatka (South
point of Kamchatka) in such a way that all the narrow waters between Hokusy and
Kamchatka are included in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Islands[edit]
Some of the Sea of Okhotsk's islands are quite large, including Japan's second
largest island, Hokkaido, as well as Russia's largest island, Sakhalin. Practically
all of the sea's islands are either in coastal waters or belong to the various
islands making up the Kuril Islands chain. These fall either under undisputed
Japanese or Russian ownership or disputed ownership between Japan and Russia. Iony
Island is the only island located in open waters and belongs to the Khabarovsk Krai
of the Russian Federation. The majority of the sea's islands are uninhabited making
them ideal breeding grounds for seals, sea lions, seabirds, and other sea island
fauna. Large colonies, with over a million individuals, of crested auklets use the
Sea of Okhotsk as a nesting site.

History[edit]

Most of the Sea of Okhotsk, with the exception of the Sakhalin Island, had been
well mapped by 1792
Pre-modern[edit]
The Okhotsk culture is an archaeological coastal fishing and hunter-gatherer
culture of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk (6001000 CE in Hokkaido, until
1500 or 1600 CE in the Kurils).

Some believe that Mishihase was living in the area.

Exploration and settlement[edit]

Russian explorers Ivan Moskvitin and Vassili Poyarkov were the first Europeans to
visit the Sea of Okhotsk (and, probably, the island of Sakhalin[3]) in the 1640s.
The Dutch captain Maarten Gerritsz Vries in the Breskens entered the Sea of Okhotsk
from the south-east in 1643, and charted parts of the Sakhalin coast and Kurile
Islands, but failed to realize that either Sakhalin or Hokkaido are islands.

The first and foremost Russian settlement on the shore was the port of Okhotsk,
which relinquished commercial supremacy to Ayan in the 1840s. The Russian-American
Company all but monopolized the commercial navigation of the sea in the first half
of the 19th century.

The Second Kamchatka Expedition under Vitus Bering systematically mapped the entire
coast of the sea, starting in 1733. Jean-Franois de La Prouse and William Robert
Broughton were the first non-Russian European navigators known to have passed
through these waters other than Maarten Gerritsz Vries. Ivan Krusenstern explored
the eastern coast of Sakhalin in 1805. Mamiya Rinzo and Gennady Nevelskoy
determined that the Sakhalin was indeed an island separated from the mainland by a
narrow strait. The first detailed summary of the hydrology of the Okhotsk sea was
prepared and published by Stepan Makarov in 1894.

Whaling[edit]
American and French whaleships, as well as a few German, Russian, and British,
hunted whales in the Sea of Okhotsk between 1845 and 1909.[4][5][6] They targeted
two species: the right whale and the bowhead whale, the former primarily in the
southern half of the sea and the latter in the northern half though the two
overlapped in the northeastern part of the sea from 5630' to 57 N and 150 to 154
E.[7] Bowheads were first caught in 1847, and dominated the catch between 1849 and
the late 1860s.[4] Beginning in the mid-1850s they caught the occasional gray
whale,[8] and made attempts to catch humpback,[9] fin,[10] blue[11] and killer
whales[12] as well but were rarely successful. Beluga whales were also taken
opportunistically.[13] Between 1850 and 1853 the majority of the fleet went to the
Bering Strait region to hunt bowheads, but intense competition, poor ice
conditions, and declining catches forced the fleet back to the Sea of Okhotsk. From
1854 to 1856, an average of nearly 150 vessels cruised in the sea each year.[14] As
catches declined between 1858 and 1860 the fleet shifted back to the Bering Strait
region;[14] by the mid-1860s few ships cruised in the sea.[15] In the 1860s the
Russians also established a couple whaling stations in Tugur Bay, which operated
until the mid-1870s.[16] American and French ships, meanwhile, had abandoned the
sea in the early 1870s.[17] Several vessels returned in 1874[18] but the bowhead
catch was so poor that season[19] that they again deserted the area for the rest of
the decade.[20] When they returned in the 1880s[21] and 1890s[22] they mainly
caught right whales, rarely venturing north to search for bowheads.[4][23]

Ships usually arrived in April or May.[24] They first made their way to the
northeastern part of the sea to hunt bowheads along the pack ice, then worked
through the ice either to the northeast to Northeast Gulf (Shelikhov Gulf),[25]
north to Tausk Bay (Taui Bay),[26] or west to Jonas Island (Iony Island).[27] After
spending a few weeks cruising around Jonas Island, many followed the retreating ice
to the south and converged on the bays to the south and west of the Shantar
Islands, including Shantar Bay (Tugur Bay),[28] Mercury Bay (Ulban Bay),[29] and
Southwest Bay (Uda Gulf).[30] On 28 July 1854, the New Bedford ship Isabella
reported as many as 94 ships in sight from her deck in Shantar Bay alone.[31] As
the ice usually left the bays and gulfs in July[32] or August,[33] bowheads were
left with nowhere to seek refuge, resulting in what has been called a "hunter's
paradise". Whaling in these confined conditions and the sheer number of ships and
boats cruising about also led to the recovery of numbers of "stinkers", dead whales
that had been lost by other vessels; right whales, on the other hand, were caught
in "open, often rough water", so when they sank they were lost in these deeper
waters.[4]