The Tsemes Bay (also ''Tsemess Bay'' and ''Novorossiysk Bay''; Russian: Цемесская бухта, ''Tsemesskaya bukhta'') is an ice-free

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 ...

located on the north-eastern coast of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

, in

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 ...

. It takes its name from the which flows into the bay. The depth of the sea varies from 21 to 27 meters. The length of the bay is 15 kilometers; its maximum width is 9 kilometers. It is delimited by the and by . Although navigation is affected by strong autumn and winter

bora wind The bora is a northerly to north-easterly katabatic wind in areas near the Adriatic Sea. Similar nomenclature is used for north-eastern winds in other littoral areas of eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea basins. Name It is known in Greek as (' ...

s (up to 220 kilometers per hour), ancient Greek navigators frequented the bay and established the colony of Bata on the shore.

Michael Rostovtzeff Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, or Rostovtsev (; – October 20, 1952), was a Russian historian whose career straddled the 19th and 20th centuries and who produced important works on ancient Roman and Greek history. He served as president of t ...

explained this by the lack of any other decent harbours along the coastline between the bay and

Batumi Batumi (; ka, ბათუმი ), historically Batum or Batoum, is the List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), second-largest city of Georgia (country), Georgia and the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, located on the coast ...

to the south.Rostovtzeff, Michael Ivanovich. ''Iranians and Greeks in South Russia''. The Clarendon Press, 1922. Page 63. During the Middle Ages the Ghisolfi merchant family of

Genoa Genoa ( ; ; ) is a city in and the capital of the Italian region of Liguria, and the sixth-largest city in Italy. As of 2025, 563,947 people live within the city's administrative limits. While its metropolitan city has 818,651 inhabitan ...

controlled the coast.

Novorossiysk Novorossiysk (, ; ) is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. It is one of the largest ports on the Black Sea. It is one of the few cities designated by the Soviet Union as a Hero City. The population was History In antiquity, the shores of the ...

, founded by Russians in 1838 as a military facility, is the chief port on the bay. In June 1918

Soviet Navy The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...

crews scuttled several ships of the

Black Sea Fleet The Black Sea Fleet () is the Naval fleet, fleet of the Russian Navy in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Mediterranean Sea. The Black Sea Fleet, along with other Russian ground and air forces on the Crimea, Crimean Peninsula, are subordin ...

in the bay to avoid their transfer to the Germans. Several notable shipwrecks occurred in Tsemes bay, including that of SS ''Admiral Nakhimov'' in 1986. Following the 1992 establishment of the

Caspian Pipeline Consortium The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) is a consortium and an oil pipeline that transports Caspian oil from the Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan to the Novorossiysk-2 Marine Terminal, an export terminal at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk ...

, the Commercial Seaport of Novorossiysk has emerged as the busiest oil terminal in the Black Sea. The southern portion of the bay, with the minor resort of , is administered from

Gelendzhik Gelendzhik (; Adyghe: Хъулъыжъий, Ḣułəžij) is a resort town in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the Gelendzhik Bay of the Black Sea, between Novorossiysk ( to the northwest) and Tuapse ( to the southeast). Greater Gelendzhik sp ...

(see Gelendzhik Bay).

References

{{coord, 44.6833, N, 37.8333, E, source:kolossus-ruwiki, display=title Novorossiysk Bays of the Black Sea Bays of Krasnodar Krai