Baltic Sea

The cold wet sand scratches against your toes and you lay down a towel to sit, hoping to catch the red sunset before you head away from the sweet sounds of the shore, back to the din of the city. The colors seem to reach out to you. The green algae, blue sky meeting blue water, white foam crashing, even the grey of the rocks shines brilliantly in the sunlight. What a gift to see and feel this beach, all alone, in peace and silence. The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. The Baltic Sea is about 1,600 km (1,000 mi) long, an average of 193 km (120 mi) wide, and an average of 55 m (180 ft, 30 fathoms) deep. The maximum depth is 459 m (1506 ft) which is on the Swedish side of the center. It is known that since 1720, the Baltic Sea has frozen over entirely only 20 times. The most recent case was in early 1987, which was the most severe winter in Scandinavia since that date. In the recent years prior to 2011, Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea were frozen with solid ice near the Baltic coast and dense floating ice far from it. In 2007 there was almost no ice formation except for a short period in March. The Baltic Sea's salinity is much lower than that of ocean water, as a result of abundant freshwater runoff from the surrounding land, combined with the shallowness of the sea itself; indeed, runoff contributes roughly one-fortieth its total volume per year, with a flow of fresh water into the sea from approximately two-hundred rivers.