The Taman Bay (

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 ...

: Таманский залив) is a shallow

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

or gulf on the east coast of the

Strait of Kerch The Kerch Strait is a strait in Eastern Europe. It connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, separating the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea in the west from the Taman Peninsula of Russia's Krasnodar Krai in the east. The strait is to wide and u ...

shaped on the southern side by the Tuzla Spit and to the north by the Chushka Spit. It dips into the Taman Peninsula of

Krasnodar Krai Krasnodar Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (a krai), located in the North Caucasus region in Southern Russia and is administratively a part of the Southern Federal District. Its administrative center is the t ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

for about 16 km. The bay is 8 km wide at its mouth and is up to 5 metres deep. Fishing villages and the old townlet of Taman afford fine views of the bay. It is full of islets, many carved out from the Tuzla Spit by a storm in 1925. Some of the Tuzla Spit was reconstituted during construction of the

Crimean Bridge The Crimean Bridge (, ; ), also called Kerch Strait Bridge or Kerch Bridge, is a pair of parallel bridges, one for a four-lane road and one for a double-track railway, spanning the Kerch Strait between the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar Krai in ...

. Freezing normally begins in mid-December and continues until March.«Ледовый режим Таганрогского залива и Керченского пролива»
(''tr. "Ice regime of the Taganrog Bay and the Kerch Strait"'') ''esimo.oceanography.ru'' (in Russian)

References

Bays of the Sea of Azov Bays of Krasnodar Krai Kerch Strait {{KrasnodarKrai-geo-stub