Topic summary
Arabian Sea
The Arabian Sea (Arabic: بَØر٠ٱلْعَرَبْ, romanized: baḥr al-Ê¿arab) is a region of sea in the northern Indian Ocean, bounded on the west by the Arabian Peninsula, Gulf of Aden and Guardafui Channel, on the northwest by Gulf of Oman and Iran, on the north by Pakistan, on the east by India, and on the southeast by the Laccadive Sea and the Maldives, and on the southwest by Somalia. Its total area is 3,862,000 km (1,491,000 sq mi) and its maximum depth is 5,395 meters (17,700 feet). The Gulf of Aden in the west connects the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Oman is in the northwest, connecting it to the Persian Gulf. It is dominated in its south and center by the Arabian Basin, an expansive, relatively flat stretch of seabed reaching depths exceeding 4500 meters in some areas. Most islands and seamounts within the sea are located along its coastal fringes, close to major landmasses.
The straits of Hormuz and Bab-el Mandeb on the northwestern and western ends of the Arabian Sea have historically served as gateways connecting the kingdoms and polities of the Eastern and Western limits of the Old World since the establishment of the region's first international trade networks in the 3rd millennium BC. This produced countless interdependent nodes of regional commerce all operating in tandem with one another, linking merchants in the Mediterranean with their counterparts in the Near East, who thereafter linked to Persia and East Africa, on to India, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Malay Archipelago. This combined activity facilitated the widespread diffusion of concepts, peoples, philosophies, technologies, religions, specie, and various domesticate variants of crops and livestock across the Old World over millennia, most profoundly from and within the confines of the Indian Ocean and Near Eastern worlds.
Trade was historically restricted by the monsoon winds and the currents produced by their interaction with the Indian Ocean Warm Pool. In mid-summer, strong winds carry warm air and moisture northeastwards from the African interior and Indian Ocean, resulting in heavy rains on the northeast shoreline of the Arabian basin, and dry conditions in the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula, though both have seen dramatic fluctuations in their pattern in recent years in favor of more intensive rainfall. Cold, shallow, dry, southwesterly winds from the Karakoram and Himalayas would otherwise predominate in winter and spring.
The Arabian Sea forms the predominance of the Arabian Sea large marine ecosystem, a marine environment stretching from the Laccadive to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf that is considered to be one of the most, if not the most biologically productive regions on the planet. The region is bounded by the Carlsberg Ridge in the Sea's south. It has been placed under significant strain in recent decades, leading to the listing of a significant number of endangered and critically endangered marine and terrestrial species, owed in large part to overfishing, unintended bycatch, industrial and residential development, pollution, global heating, and accelerating eutrophication in coastal waters.
Notable seaports in the modern era include the Jawaharlal Nehru and Mormugao Ports in India, the Ports of Karachi, Qasim, and Gwadar in Pakistan, Chabahar Port in Iran, and the Port of Salalah in Oman. Among the largest islands in the Arabian Sea are Socotra (Yemen), Masirah (Oman), and Astola (Pakistan). The countries with coastlines on the Arabian Sea are Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, Iran, India and the westernmost islands of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagos.