Bay

A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that connects directly to a larger body of water such as an ocean, a lake or another bay. Larger examples may be called gulfs, seas, sounds or bights, a small bay with a narrow entrance is a cove, and a bay carved by a glacier into a long, steep-sided shape is a fjord. The largest bays trace back to the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea, whose curved rift faults left behind bays such as the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Bengal, the largest bay in the world. Most smaller bays instead form through differential erosion, with softer rock wearing away faster than the surrounding coastline while harder rock survives as headlands, and their sheltered water has long made bays valuable for fishing, safe anchorage and trade.