White Sea

White Sea (Russian, Beloye More), arm of the Barents Sea, forming an indentation in the coast of north-western Russia, and partly enclosed on the north by the Kola Peninsula. It is about 585 km (365 mi) long and has an area of about 95,000 sq km (36,700 sq mi). Steep cliffs border the north-west shores, while the south-east shores are low and flat. Major embayments include Mezenskaya Bay on the east, Dvina Bay on the south-east, Onega Bay on the south, and Kandalaksha Gulf on the north-west. At the entrance to Onega Bay are the Solovetskiye Islands (Solovki), an archipelago which, since the 15th century, has been a strong monastic centre of the Orthodox Church, and which was also the site of an infamous gulag prison in the 1920s and 1930s. The islands were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.

The White Sea receives the waters of numerous rivers, notably the Northern Dvina, the Onega, and the Mezen, and partly because of the resultant low salinity, a large part of its surface is frozen from November to May annually. The sea contains highly productive herring, cod, and seal fisheries. It is linked to the Baltic Sea by an inland waterway, the White Sea-Baltic Canal, constructed between 1931 and 1933, mostly by forced labour at the cost of thousands of lives. The waterway allows ships to avoid the long route around the Scandinavian Peninsula. It also connects north-west Russia with the far eastern ports of Russia. Among the principal White Sea ports are Archangel, Kem, Belomorsk, Onega, Mezen, and Kandalaksha.