The Iceland Sea is a small body of water delimited by the Jan Mayen

fracture zone A fracture zone is a linear feature on the ocean floor—often hundreds, even thousands of kilometers long—resulting from the action of offset mid-ocean ridge axis segments. They are a consequence of plate tectonics. Lithospheric plates on e ...

to the north,

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...

to the west, the

Denmark Strait The Denmark Strait () or Greenland Strait ( , 'Greenland Sound') is an oceanic strait between Greenland to its northwest and Iceland to its southeast. The Norwegian island of Jan Mayen lies northeast of the strait. Geography The strait connect ...

to the south, and the Jan Mayen Ridge to the east. Depths usually range from 500 to 2,000 meters but can be shallower on the

Continental shelf A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island ...

of East Greenland. The

Kolbeinsey Ridge The Kolbeinsey Ridge is a segment of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge located to the north of Iceland in the Arctic Ocean. It is bounded to the south by the Tjörnes Fracture Zone, which connects the submarine ridge to the on-shore Northern Volcanic Zone ri ...

crosses the Iceland Sea, dividing it into eastern and western parts. IcelandicSeaIce

According to the

International Hydrographic Organization The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) is an intergovernmental organisation representing hydrography. , the IHO comprised 98 Member States. A principal aim of the IHO is to ensure that the world's seas, oceans and navigable waters ...

, in its 1953 edition of the ''Limits of Oceans and Seas'' standard, which as of 2021 is still in force, the

Greenland Sea The Greenland Sea is a body of water that borders Greenland to the west, the Svalbard archipelago to the east, Fram Strait and the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Norwegian Sea and Iceland to the south. The Greenland Sea is often defined a ...

comprises the area of the Iceland Sea. The proposed 2002 edition defines the Iceland Sea as a zone of its own.

Marine life

Many species of seals and whales reside in the frigid waters off Iceland's northern coast.

References

{{reflist Arctic Ocean Seas of the Arctic Ocean Geography of Iceland