The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.
Known among Russians in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea (Norwegian Sea), the current name of the sea is after the historical Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz.
This is a rather shallow shelf sea, with an average depth of 230 metres (750 ft), and it is an important site for both fishing and hydrocarbon exploration. The Barents Sea is bordered by the Kola Peninsula to the south, the shelf edge towards the Norwegian Sea to the west, and the archipelagos of Svalbard to the northwest, Franz Josef Land to the northeast and Novaya Zemlya to the east. The islands of Novaya Zemlya, an extension of the northern end of the Ural Mountains, separate the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea.
