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The Bay of Biscay (/ ˈ b ɪ s k eɪ,-k i / BISS-kay, -kee) is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Point Penmarc'h to the Spanish border, and along the northern coast of Spain, extending westward to Cape Ortegal .
The geology of the Bay of Biscay formed as the North Atlantic opened during the late Cretaceous. Near shore, thinned continental crust shows signs of complicated stress patterns, while basalt oceanic crust lies beneath deep water offshore. Geologists have debated whether the bay opened in a simple rotation "scissor pattern" or through left ...
A gulf in geography is a large bay that is an arm of an ocean or sea. Not all geological features which could be considered a gulf have "Gulf" in the name, for example the Bay of Bengal or Arabian Sea .
This page was last edited on 3 September 2023, at 18:53 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.
Biscay (/ ˈ b ɪ s k eɪ, ˈ b ɪ s k i / BISK-ay, BISK-ee; [1] [2] Basque: Bizkaia; Spanish: Vizcaya [biθˈkaʝa]) or Bizkaia, is a province of the Basque Autonomous Community, heir of the ancient Lordship of Biscay, lying on the south shore of the eponymous bay. The capital and largest city is Bilbao.
In the early Cretaceous, the Bay of Biscay started opening around 126 Ma and completed by 85 Ma. This created the Biscay Abyssal Plain, and parted the peninsula from the Trevelyan Escarpment. During this time Iberia rotated anticlockwise relative to Eurasia. This caused the subduction of the Ligurian Basin onto the eastern side.
The distinctive V-shaped blow of a North Atlantic right whale, the primary species hunted by the Basques in the Bay of Biscay. Another author contends that the first mention of the use of whales by the Basques came in 1059, in which year a measure was passed to concentrate whale meat in the market of Bayonne. [3]
In 1554, Basque ships from Labourd and Bordeaux (based in Buitres) attacked Basques from Gipuzkoa and Biscay in Saint-Modeste-Ouest. [1] After the signing of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, the ships of the Guipuskoa and Biscay increased in number while ones from Labourd declined. However, Johannes de Gaberie, a Basque from Saint-Jean ...