Norwegian Sea facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Quick facts for kids Norwegian Sea
The Vestfjorden with the mountains of the Lofoten archipelago seen from Løvøy Island in Steigen. Vågakaillen (942 m) is the taller of the two peaks in the centre of the image.
The Norwegian Sea is outlined in red (Europäisches Nordmeer in German)
Coordinates	69°N 2°E / 69°N 2°E / 69; 2
Type	Sea
Basin countries	Norway, Iceland

Surface area	1,383,000 km² (534,000 sq mi)
Average depth	2,000 m (6,600 ft)
Max. depth	3,970 m (13,020 ft)
Water volume	2,000,000 km³ (1.6×10¹² acre⋅ft)

The Norwegian Sea is a large part of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is located northwest of Norway. This sea sits between the North Sea and the Greenland Sea. To the west, it connects with the main Atlantic Ocean, and to the northeast, it meets the Barents Sea.

Unlike many other seas, most of the Norwegian Sea's bottom is very deep. It is not part of a continental shelf, which is the shallow edge of a continent. The average depth is about two kilometers (1.2 miles). Under the seabed, there are large amounts of oil and natural gas. These resources are being collected for commercial use.

The coastal areas of the Norwegian Sea are full of fish. These fish come from the North Atlantic to the Norwegian Sea to lay their eggs. A warm ocean current called the North Atlantic Current keeps the water warm and stable. This means the Norwegian Sea stays free of ice all year round, unlike other Arctic seas.

Phytoplankton bloom in the Norwegian Sea.

Life in the Norwegian Sea
Images for kids
See also

Life in the Norwegian Sea

The Norwegian Sea is a special place where cold Arctic conditions meet warmer boreal conditions. This means you can find plants and animals from both regions here. Many Arctic species reach their southern limit in this sea. At the same time, many boreal species reach their northern limit here. This creates an overlap zone where different species live together. Some animals, like the scallop Chlamys islandica and capelin, prefer to live in this mix of Atlantic and Arctic waters.

Tiny Organisms and Sea Bottom Life

Most of the living things in the Norwegian Sea are found in the upper layers of the water. Only a small part of the total life is found deeper than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) or near the seafloor.

The growth of tiny plant-like organisms, called phytoplankton, is highest around May 20th. The main types of phytoplankton are diatoms, especially Thalassiosira and Chaetoceros. After this spring growth, other tiny organisms called haptophytes, like Phaecocystis pouchetti, become more common.

Tiny animal-like organisms, called zooplankton, are mostly copepods such as Calanus finmarchicus and Calanus hyperboreus. C. hyperboreus is more common in the colder Arctic waters. These copepods are a main food source for many sea animals. Important krill species, which are small shrimp-like creatures, include Meganyctiphanes norvegica, Thyssanoessa inermis, and Thyssanoessa longicaudata. Unlike the Greenland Sea, the Norwegian Sea has many plankton with calcium carbonate shells, like coccolithophores and Globigerinida.

Shrimp, especially Pandalus borealis, are a key food source for fish like cod and blue whiting. A unique feature of the Norwegian Sea is its large coral reefs made of Lophelia pertusa. These reefs provide a safe home for many different fish species.

Fish and Their Life Cycles

Herring

The coastal waters of Norway are very important for herring. Many herring populations in the North Atlantic come here to lay their eggs in March. The eggs float to the surface and are carried away from the coast by currents flowing north. Most young herring spend their summer in the Barents Sea, where they eat a lot of plankton. When they grow up, they return to the Norwegian Sea.

The number of herring changes a lot each year. It grew in the 1920s because of warmer weather. But then it dropped sharply until the 1970s, partly because too many were caught. The number of young herring fell from 11 million tons in 1956 to almost none by 1970. This greatly affected the entire ecosystem of both the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea.

Capelin is a common fish of the Atlantic-arctic transitional waters

Rules to protect the environment and control fishing have helped herring populations recover since 1987. However, this recovery also led to fewer capelin and cod. While capelin benefited from less fishing, warmer temperatures in the 1980s and competition for food with the herring caused young capelin to almost disappear from the Norwegian Sea. Older capelin were also quickly fished out. This also reduced the number of cod, which eat capelin, because there weren't enough herring yet to replace capelin in the cod's diet.

Blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou) have done well as herring and capelin numbers dropped. They became the main fish eating plankton. Blue whiting lay their eggs near the British Isles. Ocean currents carry their eggs to the Norwegian Sea, and adult blue whiting also swim there to find food. Young blue whiting spend their summer and winter in Norwegian coastal waters before returning to warmer waters west of Scotland.

The Norwegian Arctic cod mainly lives in the Barents Sea and near the Svalbard Archipelago. In the rest of the Norwegian Sea, they are only found during their breeding season near the Lofoten Islands. Other fish like Pollachius virens and haddock lay their eggs in coastal waters. Mackerel is also an important fish caught for food. The coral reefs are home to different species of fish from the genus Sebastes.

Mammals and Birds

Armhook squid Gonatus fabricii

Many large whales live in the Norwegian Sea, including minke, humpback, sei, and orca whales. White-beaked dolphins are found in the coastal waters. Orcas and some other whales visit the sea in the summer to feed. They follow the schools of herring. Minke whales are the most common whales, with about 110,000 in total. Norway and Iceland hunt them, with Norway having a limit of about 1,000 per year. Today, they are mostly hunted for their meat.

The bowhead whale used to live in this area but almost disappeared after a lot of whaling in the 1800s. It was even gone from the entire North Atlantic for a while. Similarly, blue whales used to form large groups between Jan Mayen and Spitsbergen, but they are rarely seen now. It is also rare to see northern bottlenose whales in the Norwegian Sea. Other large animals in the sea include hooded and harp seals, and squid.

Important seabirds that live in the Norwegian Sea are puffins, kittiwakes, and guillemots.

Images for kids

Norwegian Sea, surrounded by shallower seas to the south (North Sea) and northeast (Barents Sea). The white dot near the centre is Jan Mayen, and the dot between Spitsbergen (large island to the north) and Norway is Bear Island.
Vedøya, Skumvær and Røst islands, Lofoten, Norway
Tide ranges and tide times (hours after Bergen) along the Norwegian coast
Thermohaline circulation explains the formation of cold, dense deep water in the Norwegian Sea. The entire circulation pattern takes ~2000 years to complete.
Surface currents in the North Atlantic
Atlantic herring
Blue whiting
Traditional cod stand
Arctic whaling (18th century). The ships are Dutch and the animals are bowhead whales. Beerenberg on Jan Mayen Land can be seen in the background.
The Carta Marina (1539) by Olaus Magnus is the earliest detailed map of the Nordic countries. Note various sea monsters on the map.
Illustration by Harry Clarke (1889–1931) for Edgar Allan Poe's story "Descent into the Maelstrom," published in 1919.
In the late 19th century, Henrik Mohn developed the first dynamic flow model of the North Atlantic. This map of 1904 shows surface and underwater currents.
HMS Sheffield during the winter convoy through the Norwegian Sea to Russia in 1941
Soviet nuclear submarine K-278 Komsomolets, 1986
Map of the Langeled pipeline
Hyperiidea
Shrimp Pandalus borealis
Lophelia pertusa
Meganyctiphanes norvegica