Barents Sea Ecosystem overview

The Barents Sea is a shelf area of approximately 1.4 million km2, which borders to the Norwegian Sea in the west and

the Arctic Ocean in the north, and is part of the continental shelf area surrounding the Arctic Ocean. The Barents Sea is

bounded by the continental slope between Norway and Spitsbergen in the west, the continental slope towards the Arctic Ocean in the north, Novaya Zemlya in the east and the coast of Norway and Russia in the south (Figure 3.1.1). The

average depth is 230 m, with a maximum depth of about 500 m at the western entrance. There are several bank areas,

with depths between 50–200 m.