The Japan/East Sea is often described as a miniature ocean, and the characterization is apt. The relatively small basin (about 1000 km by 800 km) spans conditions from subarctic to subtropical and so involves many of the features found in larger oceans: deep water formation, subduction, boundary inputs, fronts, eddies, ocean jets, and biological zonations. The basin, although oceanographically diverse, is surprisingly tractable for oceanographic studies with our modern oceanographic tools.

Brink, K.H., and S.P. Murray. 2006. Special issue intro: East of Korea and west of Japan…The very model of modern major oceanography. Oceanography 19(3):14–16, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2006.54.

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