The Argentine Sea () is a marginal sea of the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

adjacent to the southern tip of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. It ranges from the mouth of the estuary of the

Río de la Plata The Río de la Plata (; ), also called the River Plate or La Plata River in English, is the estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River at Punta Gorda, Colonia, Punta Gorda. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean and ...

in the north ( 35th parallel south) to the Isla de los Estados in the south, and from the Argentine coast to the 200 meters isobath. Its width varies between 210 km in front of Mar del Plata and 850 km at the latitude of the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; ), commonly referred to as The Falklands, is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and from Cape Dub ...

. The coastline extends for 4,725 km. To the east of the Argentine Sea extends much deeper and more extensive Argentine Basin.

History

The name ''Argentine Sea'' appears to have been coined by Romanian-born explorer Julius Popper, who surveyed and charted parts of Tierra del Fuego in the mid 1880s. The name appears in charts of the region he published in 1891.

Geography

The Argentine Sea is in the

South Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

off the southeastern coast of Argentina, extending from the approximate latitude of

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

, Uruguay, southward to Tierra del Fuego, and is situated about north of

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. It is underlain by the continental sea shelf of the Patagonian Shelf The Argentine Sea has a surface area of and is one of the largest seas in the world. The average depth of the sea is and the maximum depth is . It has a salinity of 3.5%. The Argentine Sea progressively widens going southward, in contrast to the narrowing of the continental mass. The sea platform has a series of plateaux which descend to the east as large terraces or steps. Because of its stair-shaped plateaux, the Argentine Sea is similar morphologically to the Extra- Andean Patagonia. The

are also located within the continental shelf of the Argentine Sea.

Territorial claims

According to the law 23968, the territorial waters of Argentina extend from the line from the gulfs of San Matías and San Jorge to the outer limits of the River Plate. The contiguous zone extends 12 nautical miles after the territorial waters, and the

exclusive economic zone An exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine natural resource, reso ...

from it. The extended continental shelf extends to either the limits of the exclusive economic zone or the shelf slope. Argentina has signed and ratified the

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea Treaty, is an international treaty that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities. , 169 sov ...

. The exclusive economic zone claimed by Argentina overlap with claims maintained by the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

around the

and similar claims around South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The UK's Falkland Islands claim boundary starts from the midpoint between Argentina and the Islands to the West and stretches 200 nautical miles in other directions with similar claims around the other

British Overseas Territories The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) or alternatively referred to as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are the fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, ...

. Argentina announced its claim without consultation with the United Kingdom. In the years 1990 to 2005 fishing and mineral resources in the area were administered by joint commissions between Argentina and the United Kingdom, Argentina unilaterally withdrew from these organisations in 2005 to pursue a more aggressive stance in its claim to the Falkland Islands. At any one time Argentina usually has a single vessel patrolling the undisputed area of its claim, the vessels do not enter the exclusive economic zone of the United Kingdom although there have been reports of Argentine warships threatening vessels on the Falkland side of the border by radio. Under the terms of the

Article 59 disputed and overlapping claims have no legal force until the dispute is resolved between the opposing parties.

Dispute over the extended continental shelf with Chile

Dispute over the extended continental shelf in the Southern Zone Sea between Argentina and Chile

Biodiversity

The Argentine sea is one of the most temperate seas of the world. It receives the cold Falkland Current from the south, which comes from the Antarctic, and the warm Brazil Current from the north. The Argentine sea has twelve areas identified as places of great biodiversity. There are two international protected areas, one national, and eighteen provincial ones. The Argentine sea has

plankton Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms that drift in Hydrosphere, water (or atmosphere, air) but are unable to actively propel themselves against ocean current, currents (or wind). The individual organisms constituting plankton are ca ...

algae Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthesis, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular ...

, crustaceans, sardines and anchovies. Those feed the more advanced fauna such as penguins, cormorants, sharks, whales, dolphins, Burmeister's porpoise, fur seals, sea lions, and southern elephant seals.

References