Sound (geography)

A sound is a smaller body of water usually connected to a sea or ocean; it may be an inlet deeper than a bight and wider than a fjord, a narrow sea or ocean channel between two landmasses similar to a strait, or a lagoon lying between a barrier island and the mainland. Many sounds form when the sea floods a river valley, leaving a long inlet with gently sloping hillsides running down to the water, as with the Marlborough Sounds of New Zealand; others form when a glacier carves a valley into a coast and then retreats, letting the sea invade it, which produces the steep, near-vertical sides more properly called a fjord. A sound generally offers a protected anchorage and often forms part of the geography of larger islands, and the term itself reflects Northern European usage, where it denotes straits or narrow passages across Scandinavia and the Baltic.