Gulf of Maine, ME

The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the northeastern coast of North America.

It is delineated by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and Cape Sable at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast. It includes the entire coastlines of the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Maine, as well as Massachusetts north of Cape Cod, and the southern and western coastlines of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia respectively.

Both Massachusetts Bay and the Bay of Fundy are included within the Gulf of Maine system. As such, the Gulf of Maine is also home to the highest tidal variations on the planet (see Bay of Fundy for further information

There are three major basins contained within the Gulf of Maine: Wilkinson Basin to the west, Jordan Basin in the northeast, and Georges Basin in the south, which are isolated from each other beneath the 650 foot (200 m) isobath. Georges Basin, just north of Georges Bank, is the deepest of the three at just over 1200 feet (370 m) and generates a pocket at the end of the Northeast Channel, a deep fissure between Georges Bank and Browns Bank, the southwestern edge of the Nova Scotian Shelf. The Northeast Channel is the major channel between the Gulf and the rest of the Northwest Atlantic. A secondary, shallower connection to the rest of the Atlantic is the Great South Channel, located between Georges Bank and the Nantucket Shoals.

The cold waters of the gulf make it one of the most productive marine environments in the North Atlantic, and it furnishes habitat for many diverse species including most notably the Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) and the American lobster (Homarus americanus), which grows to famously large sizes in the gulf.