Bowhead whales swimming in Lingolm strait by Vladislav Raevskii

Lindholm Strait (

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

: ''Proliv Lindgol'ma'') is a strait in the northwestern

Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk; Historically also known as , or as ; ) 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 southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the sou ...

. It separates Malyy Shantar and

Belichiy Island Belichy Island (, ''Belichy Ostrov'', literally: "Squirrel Island") is a narrow island in the northwestern Sea of Okhotsk, one of the Shantar Islands. Geography The island is 20.3 km in length, with a maximum width of about 5 km. It is c ...

s to the north from the Tugur Peninsula to the south. At its narrowest it is only 3.2 km (2 mi) wide.

Tide Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide tables ...

s are semidiurnal. Springs rise 4.9 m (16 ft), while neaps rise 3.6 m (11.8 ft). The flood current sets west, while the stronger ebb current flows in the opposite direction. The former creates large

eddies In fluid dynamics, an eddy is the swirling of a fluid and the reverse current created when the fluid is in a turbulent flow regime. The moving fluid creates a space devoid of downstream-flowing fluid on the downstream side of the object. Fluid ...

and

whirlpool A whirlpool is a body of rotating water produced by opposing currents or a current running into an obstacle. Small whirlpools form when a bath or a sink is draining. More powerful ones formed in seas or oceans may be called maelstroms ( ). ''Vo ...

s. Tidal currents vary from 3.5 to 6 knots.National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. (2014). ''Sailing Directions (Enroute): East Coast of Russia''. U.S. Government, Springfield, Virginia. In the summer

bowhead whale The bowhead whale (''Balaena mysticetus''), sometimes called the Greenland right whale, Arctic whale, and polar whale, is a species of baleen whale belonging to the family Balaenidae and is the only living representative of the genus '' Balaena' ...

s can be seen in the strait.Shpak, O. V., Meschersky, I. G., Chichkina, A. N., Kuznetsova, D. M., Paramonov, A. Y., & V. V. Rozhnov. (2014). "New data on the Okhotsk Sea bowhead whales". ''Paper presented to the Scientific Committee of IWC 65''. 5 pp.

History

The strait was frequented by

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

whaleship A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales. Terminology The term ''whaler'' is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Jap ...

s hunting bowhead whales between 1855 and 1889. They called it Shantar Gut or simply The Gut. They hunted whales in the strait or passed through it on favorable tides as they traveled back and forth between the Tugur and Ulban Bays.''Josephine'', of New Bedford, Aug. 2, Aug. 6, 1865, KWM; ''Sea Breeze'', of New Bedford, Sept. 6, Sep. 8, 1866, Old Dartmouth Historical Society.

References

Straits of Russia Bodies of water of the Sea of Okhotsk Bodies of water of Khabarovsk Krai {{KhabarovskKrai-geo-stub