Islands of the Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest of the earths five oceans, with an area of some 14 million km². Located almost entirely
within the Arctic Circle the Arctic Ocean's southern margins are ringed by the landmasses of North America, Asia and
Greenland — in effect creating a nearly land-locked ocean. Its only connection with the
Pacific Ocean is via the narrow Bering Strait, and with the Atlantic Ocean
via the larger Davis Strait and Labrador Sea (between Greenland and northeastern Canada) and the Greenland and Barents seas
(between Greenland and the northeastern Atlantic).
The margins of the Arctic Ocean include several major bodies of water, including: Baffin Bay, the Barents Sea, the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea, the East Siberian Sea, the Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea and the White Sea.
Much of the central region of the ocean is permanently frozen. In the winter season of continual darkness the Arctic ice pack can extend to twice its size — freezing marginal seas, bays and rivers deep into the continental landmasses of Alaska, Canada, Greenand and Russia.
While the open waters of the Arctic Ocean are almost completely devoid of islands, its margins and shelf edges contain thousands of islands and islets grouped into great archipleagoes such as the Arctic Archipelago of northern Canada and the chain of mostly Russian-owned island groups that rings its southern fringes off northern Eurasia, stretching from Svalbard in the west to Wrangel Island in the east. The Arctic Ocean also contains some of the world's largest islands, including the 2,166,086 km² Greenland, the world's largest island. Other major islands include Baffin Island (the 5th largest), Victoria Island (9th largest) and Ellesmere Island (10th largest).