The Sea of ​​Okhotsk is located in the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean and, according to its geographical position, belongs to the type of marginal seas. It washes the coast of Asia in the north and is separated from the ocean in the southeast by the ridges of the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Its western border is drawn along the east coast of about. Sakhalin and about. Hokkaido.

Sea straits

The Amur Estuary, Nevelskoy in the north and Laperouse in the south straits connect the Sea of ​​Okhotsk with the Sea of ​​Japan, and the numerous Kuril straits with the Pacific Ocean. The chain of the Kuril Islands is separated from about. Hokkaido Treason, and from the Kamchatka Peninsula - the First Kuril Strait. The deepest straits of the island chain are Bussol and Krusenstern. Of the other largest straits: Ekaterina, Friza, Rikord, Fourth Kuril. According to the classification of N. N. Zubov, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk belongs to the basin seas, since the depth of the straits is much less than the maximum depths of the bottom of the basin.

Coastline

Coastline Sea of ​​Okhotsk has complex outlines. Its bends, connected with the protrusions of large capes and peninsulas, form bays and bays. It is most sinuous in the southwestern and northeastern parts of the sea. In the southwest, the largest bays are Aniva and Patience, separated from high seas peninsulas Tonino-Aniva and Patience, respectively. In the northeast of Sakhalin is slightly indented, but on the shore, in close proximity to the sea, there is a chain of large lagoons called bays: Lunsky, Nabilsky, Nyisky, Chaivo, Piltun. These lagoons are separated by spits, between which there are narrow shallow passages. The lagoons are shallow and in most cases covered with algae. North of the hall. Piltun along east coast about. Sakhalin is a chain of lakes and lagoons, which, as a rule, have rounded outlines and relatively small sizes. Sakhalin Bay protrudes for 100 km between the north of about. Sakhalin and the coast of the mainland. It is limited by Cape Elizabeth in the east and Cape Alexandra in the west, the width of the bay between them is about 200 km. Two smaller bays protrude into the eastern shore of the Sakhalin Bay: Pomr and Baikal, and into the western shore - the bays of Ekaterina, Reinecke, Shchastya, etc.

From the Sakhalin Bay to the Udskaya Bay, there is the most indented section of the coast with numerous large bays: Alexandra, Academia, which in turn are wedged into the bays of Nikolai, Ulbansky and Konstantin; Tugursky, separated from the hall. Academy on the Tugur Peninsula. The northwestern coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is practically devoid of large bays, while the northern coast is significantly indented. The Tauiskaya Bay protrudes into it, the shores of which are indented with bays and bays (the Motykleisky, Akhmatonsky and Odyan bays). The bay is separated from the Sea of ​​Okhotsk by the Koni Peninsula. Of the smaller bays on the northern coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, it should be noted the Eirinei Bay and the bays of Ushki, Shelting, Zabiyak, Babushkin, Kekurny. The largest bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk lies in its northeastern part, extending 315 km into the mainland. This is the hall. Shelikhov with Gizhinsky and Penzhinsky lips. South boundary of the hall. Shelikhov is served by a line connecting Cape Tolstoy on the Pyagin Peninsula with Cape Utkholoksky on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Gizhinskaya and Penzhinskaya bays are separated by the elevated Taigonos Peninsula. The Penzhina Bay narrows sharply to 40 km with the Elistratov Peninsula in the west and the Mametchinsky Peninsula in the east. This narrowness is called the throat. In the southwestern part of the hall. Shelikhov, to the north of the Pyagin Peninsula, there is a small Yamskaya Bay with Perevalochny and Malka-chansky bays. The western coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula is flattened and practically devoid of bays. The shores of the Kuril Islands are complex in outline and form small bays. On the Sea of ​​Okhotsk side, the largest bays are located near about. Iturup: Good Beginning, Kuibyshev, Kuril, Prostor, as well as the Lion's Mouth, etc. The bays are deep-water and have a very dissected bottom.

Islands

The islands in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk are very diverse both in size and shape, and in origin. Here there are single islands and archipelagos, the islands in which are located in a compact group or elongated in the form of a ridge. Mainland islands and islands of the transition zone are distinguished. Continental islands are land masses located within a single block of the earth's crust with the mainland. The islands of the transitional zone include linearly elongated archipelagos crowning the crests of powerful curved underwater cordillera ridges. They are called island arcs. King notes a characteristic regularity in the distribution of island chains in the transition zone. They are usually double. The concave inner ridge is occupied by volcanic structures, and the outer ridge is occupied by drained ledges of the folded base of the Cordillera. From the mainland islands off the coast of Eastern Sakhalin, small islands are known: Tyuleniy and the Rock Danger Stone. Tyuleny Island has a flat top and steep shores. An accumulative surface spit departs from the southern tip. Rock Danger Stone - a small group of bare stones in the strait. La Perouse.

Iona Island is located 200 km north of about. Sakhalin. Its height is 150 m, the coast is rocky and almost sheer. The Shantar Islands lie in the northwest of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. They are an archipelago of 15 islands with an area of ​​about 2,500 km. The largest islands: Big Shantar (area 1790 km 2), Feklistova (about 400 km 2), Small Shantar (about 100 km 2), Belichiy (about 70 km 2). The climate on the islands is harsh. Of the islands on the northern coast, the most significant are located in the Tauy Bay. These are the islands of Zavyalov and Spafaryeva. Spafareva Island rises to 575 m, and about. Zavyalova is mountainous and reaches a height of 1130 m. Its slopes are covered with shrubs, the shores are rocky. In the Shelikhov Hall, the islands are located near the coast and are insignificant in size. The most distant from the coastline are the Yamsky (Atykan, Matykil), as well as the small islands of Kokontse, Baran, Hatemalyu. They are located at a distance of up to 20 km east of the Pyagin Peninsula. Small islands: Third, Extreme, Dobzhansky, Rovny, Jagged, Cone, Chemeivytegartynup - are located in the Penzhina Bay. Off the coast of western Kamchatka, there is only one noticeable island - Ptichy, located north of Cape Khairyuzovo. The garland of islands in the transitional zone, which form the Greater Kuril Range, stretched from the Shiretoko Peninsula (Hokkaido Island) in the southwest to Cape Lopatka (Kamchatka Peninsula) in the northeast. Its length is about 1300 km. In terms of plan, the ridge has the shape of an angle equal to 150 °, with a top in the area of ​​the strait. Bussol facing the Pacific Ocean. It consists of 30 large, 20 small islands and rocks. Total area of ​​the Bolshoi Islands Kuril ridge is 15.6 thousand km 2. The deep straits of Bussol and Kruzenshtern divide the archipelago into three parts: the Southern, Middle and Northern Kuriles.

The Southern Kuriles include the large islands of the Greater Kuril Ridge: Kunashir, Iturup Urup, as well as the small islands of the Black Brothers and Broughton. A significant area of ​​the large islands is hilly and terraced. Above them rise volcanic structures with a height of 1200-1800 m (Tyatya, Mendeleeva, Atsonupuri, Be-rutarube, etc.) - Urup Island is somewhat different in its massive base. The Middle Kuriles are represented the least large islands ridges: Ketoi, Ushishir, Rasshua, Matua, Raikoke. The largest of them - about. Simushir. The islands are above-water peaks of single volcanoes reaching heights of up to 1500 m. The Northern Kuriles include the islands of Shi-ashkotan, Ekarma, Chirinkotan, Onekotan, Kharim-kotan, Makanrushi, Antsiferova, Paramushir, Shumshu, Atlasov. They do not form a single chain. The largest of them (the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu) are located on the eastern outskirts of the Great Kuril Ridge. On about. Paramushir volcanoes exceed 1300 m (Karpinsky, Chikurachki), somewhat lower than Ebeko volcano (1183 m). The most high point The island belongs to the top of the Fussa volcano - 1772 m. Of the other islands, one can mention the islands of Onekotan and Shiashkotan - groups of two volcanoes connected by low-lying bridges, as well as the highest island of the Great Kuril Ridge - Atlasov, which is the peak of the Alaid volcano and reaches a mark of 2339 m.

The depth of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk reaches an average of 1780 m, and the maximum is approximately 3916 m. At the same time, its area is 1603 thousand km². It does not have the same depth, in the west it is less than in the eastern part. Many scientists classify it as semi-closed. It washes the Asian part of Eurasia and belongs to the Pacific Ocean.

Map of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk

The Sea of ​​Okhotsk washes the shores of the two states of Japan and. It is called Hokkai, literally - Northern. However, due to the existence of such a sea in the Atlantic Ocean, a new name, derived from the word Okhotsk - Okhotsuku-ka, received a distribution.

It is noteworthy that most of the territory of this sea belongs to the internal waters of these states and only a small part of it, according to the norms of international maritime law, is the open sea.
With the Pacific Ocean, this sea is connected by a number of straits located between the Kuril Islands. There are also exits to. They are connected by two straits through the Amur estuary: Tatar and Nevelskoy. And also through the La Perouse Strait. From the north and west, this sea is limited by the continental coast. In the east - the Kamchatka Peninsula and the islands. In the South - the island of Hokaido and the island of Sakhalin.
Speaking about the coastline, it should be noted that it is not very homogeneous. So in the north, the coast is noticeably more indented than in the western part. The largest bay of this sea is located in the northeast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and is called Shelikhov Bay. In addition, fairly large bays in this sea are: Eyrineyskaya Bay, Babushkina, Zabiyaka, Sheltinga and Kekurny bays. The eastern part of the sea, washing the Kamchatka Peninsula, has practically no bays.
Surface water temperatures reach an average of 1.8°C in winter and range from 10 to 18°C ​​in summer. It should be noted that in winter, or rather, somewhere from October to May, sometimes until mid-June, the part of the sea located in the north is covered with ice. While the southern one usually does not freeze. The surface layer of sea water has approximately 33.8% salinity.
This sea is characterized by mixed and diurnal tides. Their maximum amplitude is recorded in the area of ​​the Gizhiginskaya Bay, where it sometimes reaches 13 m.

Okhotsk fauna and flora

If we consider living creatures living in this sea, one can easily notice the heterogeneity of their composition in the northern and southern parts. In the north, it is inhabited for the most part by species characteristic of the Arctic seas, while in the south by those that usually live in a temperate maritime climate.
A large amount of plankton, especially zooplankton, is food for fish living in these waters. Diatoms are the most numerous among phytoplankton. Enough here and red, brown, and green algae. In addition, here you can find vast meadows of Zostera - sea grass. In general, there are more than 300 species of them in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.
There are also many species of fish here, in the northern part there are 123 species, and in the southern part there are more than 300. Among them, there are many deep-sea ones. In terms of fishing, halibut, cod, chum salmon, ivasi, pollock, pink salmon, flounder, coho salmon and even chinook salmon are most often caught. Salmon fishing is limited. This is due to a significant decrease in their population due to overfishing in past. On the this moment an artificial increase in their number.
There are also crustaceans, moreover, crab fishing is carried out off the west coast. There is also enough marine mammals, among which fishing is carried out for seals, beluga whales and seals.
The Sea of ​​Okhotsk is of great transport importance, in addition, it is of interest for oil production. In historical terms, it is not easy to single out significant events in it. Quite important naval battles took place here during the Russo-Japanese War.

Traveling on Okhotsk - for extreme people

As a tourist area, this sea is not used due to the cold climate. But the pristine nature will attract the attention of fans of extreme sports. A bunch of rare plants, natural landscape, the opportunity to watch seals resting on stones or unique birds nesting here. A multitude of diverse species, both marine and land-dwelling animals, and the incomparable view of the steel-gray sky and the sea surface leave an indelible impression.

And many feet under the keel!)))

The Sea of ​​Okhotsk is one of the largest water bodies on the planet. It is also one of the richest in terms of biological resources. The sea provides about 60% of the entire Russian Federation. Rare and endangered species live in its waters, and there are noisy "bird markets" on the banks.

The western border of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is drawn along the eastern coast of two islands: Sakhalin and Hokkaido. According to its physical and geographical characteristics, it is an inland sea. The Sea of ​​Okhotsk also belongs to the seas of the so-called mixed continental-marginal type. Its area is 1603 thousand square meters. km. BUT average depth- 821 m. The maximum depth of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is 3916 m.

Straits of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk

The Amur estuary, and also - these are the channels through which the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk connects with the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bJapan. Which ocean gives rise to the Sea of ​​Japan? It, like the Okhotsk, belongs to the waters of the Pacific Ocean. With the help of a huge number of Kuril straits, the sea is also connected to the Pacific Ocean. The deepest are the straits of the Bussol and Krusenstern islands. According to the classification of geographer N. Zubov, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk belongs to the category of basin seas. The depth of its straits is much less than the depth of the basin.

Islands of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk

The part of which ocean the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is, also determines its shape. This part of the Pacific Ocean is a large number of islands of various origins. But the coastline itself is considered relatively flat. The islands of the sea differ in their shape. There are also those that are located in the waters in compactly compressed groups. There are also singles. The map of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is dotted with many islands, including those that are in the zone of seismic activity (for example, these are the Kuriles). Scientists also distinguish the so-called islands of the transition zone. The first group includes those that are formed by a single lithospheric plate with the mainland.

And the second geographers include those that have the shape of elongated archipelagos. The first group includes small islands located near East Sakhalin. These are Seals and the Stone of Danger. seal island has a flat surface and steep banks. And the Danger Stone, in fact, is a group of bare stones located in the La Perouse Strait. Two hundred kilometers. from about. Sakhalin is located on Iona with rocky shores. Its height is about 150 m. And in the northwest is the Shantar archipelago, which includes about 15 islands, the territory of which is 2.5 km 2. The islands of the so-called Great Kuril Ridge are included in the Southern Kuriles.

Salinity and temperature

The salinity of the waters is determined by the part of which ocean the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is. The salinity of the sea is in many ways similar to the data of the Pacific Ocean. The surface waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk have a salinity of 32.8-33.8 ppm. The intermediate layer has a salinity of 34.5 ppm. It is known that in the Pacific Ocean this figure is on average 30-35 ppm. The temperature at the surface of the water in the sea during the cold season ranges from -1.8°С to +2°С. In summer, the figures rise to + 18 ° С. But at a depth of about 50-150 meters, the water temperature remains constant year-round. It is about -1.7°C. Warmer waters with a temperature of about 2-3°C enter the sea through the Kuril Straits.

Sea ownership

Since March 2003, Russia has been recognized as the official right to the enclave of the sea. The Sea of ​​Okhotsk, or rather, a significant part of its shelf with an area of ​​\u200b\u200babout 52 thousand square meters. km. is now in the possession of the Russian Federation. This event was especially important for local fishermen. After all, before they could not fish anywhere in the sea. After the transfer of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk to Russia, they will no longer have competitors from other countries who previously had to give away part of the fish they caught. In addition, other workers in the industrial industry since then have been able to cross the sea area along the most convenient route.

Biodiversity

"The Sea of ​​Okhotsk - the basin of which ocean?" - this question is also often asked in connection with the description of its marine wealth. The fauna of the sea is rich in species that came to these waters from the Pacific territories. Crabs, shrimps, sea urchins and stars, seals, whales, fur seals live here. According to some estimates, it ranks first in the world in terms of the number of crabs. It is in the waters of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk that the giant king crab lives, the leg span of which can reach 1.5 m.

About 200 species of fish are also found in the sea - these are herring, cod, navaga, pollock, capelin. Also in this area you can often meet sharks. Their species composition is similar to the Bering Sea: there is a katran, polar and salmon sharks.

Other riches

The Sea of ​​Okhotsk is rich not only in fish stocks, crabs and various shellfish. Geologists say that about 40% of the territory of its shelf are sources of black gold - oil. There are also rich deposits of natural gas. Many experts tend to believe that the amount of oil deposits at the bottom of the sea exceeds three billion barrels. But the complete transfer of the sea to Russia also means some obligations for Russia. The state must protect against poachers who hunt illegally on the territory of the sea.

Bottom Features

The bottom of the sea is very diverse. There are depressions, and gutters, and many hills. The part of which ocean the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is, also determines the nature of its shelf. According to its characteristics, it is related to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean is known to have the largest number of deep sea trenches on the planet. The Sea of ​​Okhotsk is located in the transition zone between the Asian continent and the Pacific Ocean. The sea region is a huge lithospheric plate, which is located between the Eurasian, North American and Pacific plates. The Pacific Ocean on the world map is separated from the Sea of ​​Okhotsk by the Kuril-Kamchatka deep-sea trench.

The Sea of ​​Okhotsk is often called harsh. And not in vain. However, vegetable and animal world-this huge reservoir, it turns out, is very rich and diverse.

Before proceeding to describe life in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, its characteristic complexes of organisms - communities, or biocenoses, it is necessary to briefly characterize the main systematic groups of plants and animals found in the Far Eastern seas.

Nautical vegetable world very different from terrestrial vegetation. If on land in most habitats higher, or seed, plants rarely predominate, other leafy or higher spore plants (mosses, horsetails, club mosses and ferns) are also very common, then in the seas the picture is completely different. The seabed in the coastal zone of the sea is most often inhabited by algae - lower spore plants, the body of which is not divided into stems, leaves and roots. Such a body, or thallus, often has branched formations - rhizoids, with which the alga is attached to the substrate; but, unlike the roots, they are not used to absorb mineral salts and water.

Algae can be unicellular, colonial, multicellular, or non-cellular. Some algae reach a length of several tens of meters, while others can only be seen through a microscope. Thallus of multicellular algae are in the form of simple or branched filaments, plates, tubes, cords, rods, balls and hemispheres, crusts, bubbles, maces or mushrooms. Sometimes the thallus of algae is dissected even more complex and outwardly resembles a higher plant. In a number of algae, the thallus is impregnated with lime, and they form massive crusts or jointed bushes.

One more important difference between marine and terrestrial vegetation can be noted. If on land all plants, with the exception of special dispersal stages, are closely associated with the soil, less often with other substrates, then in the sea, on the contrary, the bulk of plants remain in suspension in the water column. This is mainly due to the much higher density of water (775 times) compared to air, as well as the presence in the water of salts, gases and microelements necessary for plant life.

Existence in suspension determined the evolution of algae. Since the specific gravity of the cellular contents, although not by much, but still exceeds the specific gravity of salty sea water, only very small organisms can cook in the water column.

With a relatively large specific surface area, they sink more slowly than larger forms. Therefore, the plants living in the water column (pelagial) are very small - their sizes range from a few thousandths of a millimeter to 1-2 mm.

Most algae are autotrophs, containing, like land plants, the green pigment chlorophyll and, thanks to photosynthesis, are capable of self-constructing organic substances of their body from inorganic ones. However, the color of algae is very diverse, since the green color of chlorophyll is often masked by additional pigments of yellow, brown, red or blue.

In a systematic sense, algae do not represent a single group. So, for a long time, blue-green algae, which have an extremely primitive organization, are devoid of a formed cell nucleus, flagellar mobile stages, and for which the sexual process is not characteristic, united with other algae. although they, together with bacteria, deserve to be singled out in a special kingdom of pre-nuclear organisms. This group of organisms, as well as fungi, many of the lower representatives of which live in our seas, we will not touch on in the future. The remaining groups of algae have a well-formed nucleus and, as a rule, reproduce sexually.

diatoms. Although microscopic in size, these solitary or colonial algae are considered the main creators of organic matter in our seas. They live both in the water column and at the bottom of reservoirs. Diatoms have an olive or yellowish-brown color, since in addition to chlorophyll they contain yellow and brown pigments. A silica-impregnated shell, consisting of two valves, is a characteristic feature of these plants.

brown algae. This includes multicellular algae of various shapes and structures. Some of them are real giants among marine plants and reach more than 40 m in length. A different quantitative ratio of green, yellow, orange and brown pigments gives brown algae an olive-green, yellowish-brown, brown or dark brown (nearly black in crust forms) color. Various carbohydrates, including sugars, are deposited as reserve nutrients, but starch is not formed. In the area (the action of ebbs and flows (i.e., in the littoral zone) in the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk, fucus (Fucus evanescens) grows luxuriantly almost everywhere on rocky and stony soils - a rather large brown algae, reaching a meter in length. This algae has a ribbon-like, repeatedly forked branching thallus, which is attached to the substrate with the help of a rounded sole.The branches are flat, with a longitudinal vein in the middle.At the ends of the branches are swollen oval formations, dotted with small tubercles with holes in the center.Inside these tubercles, organs of sexual reproduction develop.In the southern part of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk Pelvetia (Pelvetia wrightii) grows above Fucus, which differs from Fucus in its smaller size, not so wide, but thicker branches, devoid of a midrib, as well as a lighter color.

To the same order of the Fucus, although to a different family, belong the most complex outwardly arranged Sargassum algae, which grow below the Fucus, usually below the ebb zone. The thallus of these algae consists of branched thin cylindrical branches resembling the stem of higher plants. The similarity is further aggravated by the presence on the branches of leaf-shaped plates with a midrib and short branches on which reproductive organs or berry-like swim bladders are located. Off the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the Sargassum alga Cystoseira is often found; the main species of Sargasso live only in the southern part of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

The largest sizes, not only among brown algae, but also among algae in general, are kelp algae, which form real underwater forests off the coast of the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, including in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, at depths of up to 20 m. The thallus of kelp usually consists of a whole or dissected plate, a simple or branched stem and a sole or rhizoids, with which the alga is attached to the substrate. Many kelp algae are valuable fishery objects, are used in cooking, as well as fertilizers in the fields, go to feed livestock. Chemists obtain from them such valuable substances as mannitol and alginic acid. Even in ancient times, all kinds of preparations from seaweed in the form of a powder or tincture were widely used in medicine. Their therapeutic effect is due to the presence of iodine, bromine, vitamins A, B, C and various mineral salts in algae. On the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, different types of kelp, or seaweed, and alaria, or beaver cabbage, grow. These genera, belonging to different families, differ in that in kelp, the reproductive organs are located on the plate itself, and in alaria, on special lamellar appendages surrounding the stem at the base of the main plate. In the northern part of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, lessonia similar to kelp grows, and in the south there are several more laminaria genera.

green algae. This group includes many both freshwater and marine forms of unicellular and multicellular organisms and a number of plants with a non-cellular structure. Among marine green algae, multicellular ones predominate, non-cellular ones are less common. Their color is usually green, as chlorophyll significantly predominates over yellow and orange pigments. The main reserve nutrient is starch. Many forms of green algae are known, but in terms of their diversity and size, these algae are noticeably inferior to brown algae. In our seas, forms with a filamentous, simple or branched, tubular, saccular or lamellar thallus predominate. Sea lettuce Ulva with a lamellar delicate light green thallus, which reaches a diameter of several tens of centimeters, can be eaten.

Red algae, or purple. These, undoubtedly, the most beautiful marine plants, in a number of essential ways, are sharply separated from real algae, for example, green and brown. Purples are completely devoid of mobile flagellar stages. Therefore, even the male sex cells in them are not capable of active movement. In addition, in addition to chlorophyll, crimson has additional pigments - blue fnkocyanin and red phycoerythrin. Interestingly, both of these features bring red algae closer to blue-green ones, from which, however, they differ in the presence of a nucleus and the ability to reproduce sexually.

Among the crimson, there are filamentous, cord-like, crust-like, lamellar, bag-shaped, bushy forms, in the form of a leaf with veins, etc. In some red algae, the body is so saturated with lime that it becomes hard as a stone. They form crusts or branching bushes, somewhat reminiscent of corals. Limy scarlets are also widespread in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

The mucus of some red algae, after appropriate thermal and other processing, turns into a dense jelly, which is called agar-agar. This substance is widely used in the food, paper and medical industries. Anfeltia crimson is a valuable raw material for the production of agar-agar in the USSR. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, it has been mined for many years in the south - in the Busse lagoon on Sakhalin Island and in the Gulf of Change on the island of Kunashir ( Kurile Islands).

Other groups of microscopic algae are also known, such as the flagellated peridinea. In most of them, the body is covered with a cellulose membrane, consisting of separate plates, less often it is naked. Some peridineans (like blue-green algae) are poisonous and, in case of excessive accumulation, cause mass death of fish and other marine animals, and sometimes people who have tasted poisoned food. But such a peridinea as the well-known night-lighter - Noctiluca, whose spherical body reaches 2 mm in diameter, is devoid of a cellulose membrane, incapable of photosynthesis due to the lack of chlorophyll and feeds by swallowing and digesting microscopic plants and protozoa. It causes a beautiful greenish-bluish glow of the sea. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, there are up to 45,000 nightlights per liter of water.

sea ​​grass. Higher plants in the seas are not as common as on land. For the Far Eastern seas, only three types of Zostera and one type of Phyllospadix are characteristic, because of their strong leaves, known as sea flax. All these species also grow in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Sea grasses, although they live in the aquatic environment, are true flowering plants that reproduce by seeds. They belong to the pondweed family, inhabiting freshwater basins. Sea grasses have long rhizomes and long, narrow, ribbon-like green leaves, the lateral edges of which are smooth in Zostera and serrated in Phyllospadix. Another characteristic feature is the presence of air cavities inside the leaves, thanks to which the sea grasses stay afloat. Their seeds develop in inflorescences, which are attached to a long flowering stem in Zostera, and near the rhizome in Phyllospadix. These two genera also differ in biology. Species of the genus Zostera grow on sandy, silty-sandy and silty soils in non-surf or weakly surf areas, and phyllospadix takes root in rock crevices and between stones, often in a zone of strong surf. Therefore, powerful, intertwined rhizomes of fnllospadix serve as a refuge for many inhabitants of the littoral, or dry zone.

Sea grasses have long been used by man. Lye and soda were obtained from their ash, while the ash was used both as a fertilizer and in the manufacture of glass. Dry sea grass was used for stuffing beds and furniture, was used as a thermal insulation material by builders, as well as in the manufacture of paper and in a number of other industries.

Unlike plants, the animal world of the seas and oceans is exceptionally rich. All types and most classes of animals originated in the oceans, and only a few classes of vertebrates and arthropods - on land. Some of them, for example, radiolarians, scyphomedusas, coral polyps, ctenophores, brachiopods, armored and cephalopods, horseshoe crabs, sea spiders, all echinoderms, bristle-jaws, pogonophores, ascidians and a number of others, i.e., 31 classes out of 72 known, to date time live only in the marine environment. Others - sponges, hydroids, nemerteans, bryozoans, polychaetes - live mainly in the seas and are few in fresh waters. However, in terms of the number of animal species, the marine environment is significantly inferior to the air, inhabited by an incredible variety of insect species, the number of which is approaching a million. In total, more than 150 thousand species of various animals live in the seas. Most of them are inhabitants of the tropics, in the Far Eastern seas there are much fewer of them - several thousand species each. Consider the main groups of marine animals inhabiting the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Protozoa. To the type of protozoan animals, zoologists still include not only all unicellular animals, but also a large number of unicellular plants - algae, which botanists have long and quite reasonably reckoned with various departments (the same - types in zoology) of plants, for example, the entire type of peridine , which were mentioned above. Naturally, we will not touch on these groups.

To the class sarcode along with the well-known freshwater amoeba, there is an extensive group of sea inhabitants - foraminifera (translated from Latin - “carrying holes”). The fact is that in many foraminifera, the walls of calcareous shells, characteristic of most species of the group, are pierced with tiny pores through which numerous pseudopodia emerge. But in some of them, the skeleton is formed by grains of sand glued to the outer layer of the body. Most foraminifera lead a benthic lifestyle. Although they are single-celled animals, some of them reach 3 cm across the shell. More than 100 species of foraminifera inhabit the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Another group of protozoa - radiolarians, or rayfish, exists only in the water column. Radiolarians range in size from fractions of a millimeter to several centimeters in diameter, but such large forms are rare. Most of these beautiful organisms with delicate, often openwork skeletons made of silica or strontium sulfate live in warm seas. There are relatively fewer of them in the Far Eastern waters, but still, over 80 species have been recorded in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Also, only in the water column live marine representatives of the most complex protozoa - ciliates, whose body is enclosed in a transparent thin house of organic matter. Because of some external similarity of the house with a bell, they got their name (in Latin, a bell is tintinnabulum). At least 30 species of these protozoa have been identified in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

A peculiar group of multicellular organisms, in many respects similar to real multicellular animals, are sponges. For many, the name "sponge" is associated with a bath sponge, although the "Greek sponge", which actually belongs to the group of organisms under consideration, has already moved into the realm of legends. In cosmetics, another sponge is used - freshwater bodyaga. Alas, the sponges that live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk cannot be used in either respect. The fact is that in most of our shallow water sponges, although they seem soft to the touch, the internal skeleton contains microscopic needles made of silica.

We have significantly fewer sponges with a calcareous skeleton. Glass sponges are amazingly beautiful with their openwork skeleton consisting of six-rayed silica needles, but they are found at great depths. In total, over 100 species of sponges have been identified in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Their forms are very diverse. Sometimes these are crusts or pillows that are overgrown with rocks, stones and bases of large algae, or lumps, lobed, branched, bushy, funnel-shaped or other formations. Glass sponges often have a cylindrical, tubular or goblet body. Sponges are typical filter feeders, that is, they feed by filtering water through their bodies and retaining small organic particles suspended in it. Most of them have an unpleasant odor that repels enemies. In our everyday life, toilet sponges are used, the skeleton of which consists only of horny fibers, and freshwater bodyagi, and some glass sponges are used for jewelry.

Coelenterates- the most primitive type among true multicellular animals, from which more complex organisms probably originated. These animals got their name due to the fact that in their body, consisting of only two layers of cells, there is only one cavity, called the intestinal. Nevertheless, among the coelenterates there is a huge variety of forms. Most of these are colonial animals, forming settlements in the form of bushes, twigs, brushes, feathers, balls, goblets, etc., soft or hard, impregnated with lime. The well-known jellyfish and sea anemones belong to single coelenterates. The life cycle of many intestinal cavities is characterized by two alternating forms - asexual in the form of a single or colonial polyp living at the bottom, and sexual - in the form of a jellyfish floating in the water. In the tropical seas, colonial coral polyps with lime-impregnated skeletons are the main builders of coral reefs. There are no such reef-forming corals in the seas of the USSR. Despite their often immobile lifestyle, all coelenterates are predators. The tentacles surrounding their mouth are equipped with stinging cells and serve both for offense and defense.

At least 200 species of polyps and jellyfish live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, not counting sea anemones, which are almost not systematically studied. The largest size, up to 2 m in diameter, reaches the red color of the jellyfish - cyanide. Fortunately, her burns, like almost all intestinal - the inhabitants of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk, are harmless to humans. Severe and sometimes life-threatening burns are caused by the cross jellyfish, which is widespread in the Sea of ​​Japan. True, in the extreme south of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, we met single individuals of the godson, but they do not pose a real danger.

Close to coelenterates a small type ctenophores. If coelenterates live both at the bottom and in the water column of reservoirs, then almost all ctenophores lead a free-floating lifestyle, never touching the bottom, with the exception of single crawling species. The body of ctenophores, like that of jellyfish, is gelatinous. The water content in their body is 99%, which, apparently, is a kind of record in the animal world. Their body is round or bag-shaped, the mouth is in front. These animals got their name because of the 8 rows of plates, each of which is split and resembles a comb. Sea cucumber lives in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

The most primitive of all worms are the ciliary worms, which have retained many similarities with ctenophores. Their body is covered with cilia, with the help of which they move. The sense organs - the organs of balance, smell and perception of light, as well as the central nervous system in the form of longitudinal nerve trunks - are primitive. There is a mouth opening, but the intestines are not always developed. Usually ciliary worms are delicate small, with a very flattened body, but some species reach a length of 16 cm. The species composition of worms in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is still very poorly studied.

A worm-like, often very long body is distinguished by nemerteans, which are distinguished as an independent type of animals. Their organization is much more complicated than that of ciliary worms. Unlike the latter, they are endowed with an anus and a circulatory system. Like ciliary worms, their body is covered with a ciliary cover. These are predatory animals, and their murder weapon is the trunk, which is usually screwed inside the body. In some nemerteans, the trunk is equipped with a sharp stylet and is equipped with a poisonous gland. The body length is usually several centimeters, although there are also forms that can stretch up to almost 30 m in length. The coloration is extremely varied. Golden-yellow, brown, white, scarlet and green animals look especially colorful, often decorated with spots or specks of other colors. Most nemerteans live at the bottom, but some species live only in the water column. The nemerteans of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk are still poorly studied; more than 25 species have been described off the coast of the Kuril Islands.

With roundworms, scientists bring together a small group of very peculiar animals, represented by only a few species. These are prnapulids, thick and valhovaty. Their mouth opening and pharynx are in front, and the pharynx is surrounded by a trunk armed with hooks and spikes, screwed inside in a calm state. With the help of this trunk, the animal is buried in the sand. In most priapulids, a grape-like appendage stands out at the posterior end of the body - the respiratory organ, or gills. There are no circulatory organs. the nervous system is arranged very primitively, there are no sense organs. Prnapulids lead a burrowing lifestyle. In length, these animals reach 10-15 cm. We found one of the species of priapulids in large numbers in the dry zone of the Gizhiginskaya Bay and the southern part of the Kuril Islands.

Annelids, in contrast to the lower ones - flat and round, scientists classify as higher worms, taking into account a number of features of their organization. Earthworms and leeches, well known to the reader, also belong to this group, but they are terrestrial or freshwater representatives of annelids. Marine species are more diverse, and many of them are distinguished by the perfection of forms. Their body consists of a head, a ringed body and a tail blade. On the sides of the body segments, there are usually organs of movement - parapodia in the form of blades, from which bristles protrude. The nervous system of annelids is quite developed and, in addition to cords, also consists of nerve nodes. The sense organs are also well developed - sight and smell. There are circulatory and excretory systems, but the respiratory organs are not always present. Polychaete rings, or polychaetes, are widespread in the seas. They got their name because their parapodia are covered with tufts of numerous bristles. Among them, both mobile, crawling and burrowing forms, as well as immobile, burrowing or located in stony or calcareous valleys, on rocks, stones and algae thalluses, have been identified. Most annelids lead a bottom lifestyle, and only a few species are free-swimming. In total, about 300 species of annelids are recorded in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and near the Kuril Islands.

The latter now also include a small group of echiurids, although their body is not dissected. These animals burrowing in loose soil with a rounded ridged body, at the front end of which there is usually a trunk that can stretch or shrink, reach 20-30 cm in length. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, Echiurus and Urechis are often found, belonging to the largest e. khuridam.

Close to annelids and class sipunculid- a small group of typically marine animals. Their body, rounded in cross section, is devoid of any appendages, except for the trunk. The mouth opening, which ends the trunk, is surrounded by a corolla of tentacles. Sipunculids either burrow into the ground, or hide between the rhizomes of sea grasses, calcareous algae and corals, exposing their trunk to the outside. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, especially in its southern part, the Japanese fiskosoma sipunculid is common. It is easiest to find it between the rhizomes of sea flax - phyllospadix, which grows in abundance in the south of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk.

Undoubtedly, from annelids descended arthropods This is the most species-rich type of the organic world. Although at least 90% of the total number of arthropod species, far exceeding a million, are insects, i.e., inhabitants of the air, still several tens of thousands of species of this type live in the sea. Most of them belong to the subtype of gill-breathers, including crustaceans that have two pairs of antennae, or antennae. Crustaceans breathe either with gills, or with the surface of some legs, or (especially small forms) with the entire surface of the body. The chitinous shell in crustaceans is usually impregnated with lime, and their body consists of a head, chest and abdomen with a tail plate. In many crustaceans, the posterior edge of the dorsal cover of the head grows strongly and covers the entire thorax from above and from the sides, or only its anterior part, forming a cephalothoracic shield, or carapace. The pectoral legs, biramous in the most primitive forms, in many crustaceans lose one of the branches. They usually serve for locomotion, often carrying gills; in many forms, the front legs are modified into claws, which makes it easier to grab food and protect. Abdominal legs are present only in representatives of the subclass of higher crustaceans. Of the five known subclasses of crustaceans, representatives of three subclasses live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

They are not at all like them, and indeed like crayfish, barnacles, whose body shape is greatly modified due to a sedentary lifestyle. However, the free-swimming larva looks like a typical crustacean. In adult crustaceans, the body is enclosed in an outer skin - a mantle, which is protected from the outside by a limestone house, composed of separate tablets. Rhythmically moving cirriform thoracic legs, filtering and aerating water, crustaceans provide themselves with food and oxygen for breathing. Usually barnacles are one of the main components of fouling of ships and hydraulic structures. At least 15 species of these maxillopods live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Sea ducks settle on algae, logs and other floating objects, the body of which sits on a flexible stalk. Coastal cliffs and ship bottoms are overgrown with stemless sea acorns. On the skin of whales, especially baleen whales, a special sea acorn, the coronula, has taken root. Throughout the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, representatives of real sea acorns are widespread - balanus, the largest of which reaches a height of 20 cm. Unfortunately, the latter species lives in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk only at depths of 100 m or more. In the southern part of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, in the upper part of the tidal strip, on the rocks, settlements of a small acorn - khtamalus, which already belongs to another family, are common.

higher crustaceans. Crustaceans of this subclass are characterized by a constant composition of the thoracic (8) and abdominal (6, rarely 7) segments, the presence of abdominal legs. Often one or more anterior thoracic segments are fused with the head, and their limbs are usually modified and transformed into mandibles. Higher crustaceans are very widely settled, and not only in the seas, but also in fresh waters and on land. This subclass includes most large crustaceans, including all commercial forms.

In a group of orders, development occurs without a true larva, and fertilized eggs are hatched in special brood bags located on the underside of the chest. The crustaceans from the order Mkzid have a cephalothoracic shield, the eyes are set on stalks, and the abdomen is thin; each thoracic peduncle consists of two branches, which is more primitive than a single-branched limb. These tiny crustaceans, rarely exceeding 2 cm in length, live both at the bottom and in the water column. In the summer somewhere on the surf sandy beach it is worth stamping your foot in the splash zone, as soon as some kind of quick swarming begins in the sand. It was we who disturbed the females of mysida Grebnitsky, who sailed here and buried themselves in the upper layer of sand for the period of gestation. Restless, but there is plenty of oxygen for the breathing of developing eggs. As the sea level rises or falls due to the tides, the females migrate up and down the coast, always remaining in the splash zone. The orders of amphipods and isopods are close to the mysids in terms of the way of bearing juveniles and some features, although they differ from them in single-branched pectoral legs and other signs of a higher organization. They do not have a cephalothoracic shield, so they do not look like a mysid. The eyes are sessile, without stalks.

Another group of orders of higher crustaceans is characterized by development with the change of several larval forms. Fertilized eggs, if hatched, are not in a bag on the chest, but between the abdominal legs; eyes always sit on stalks. The cephalothoracic shield fuses with all thoracic segments. This group includes two orders - Euphausian crustaceans and decapod crustaceans.

The Euphausiaceae order includes a relatively small number (less than 100 species) of tiny, up to 8 cm long, crustaceans, with their elongated bodies somewhat reminiscent of mysids and shrimp. Their cephalothoracic shield is shortened, so that the gills on the sides of the chest are not covered. All eight pairs of thoracic legs are of the same structure, biramous. Euphausenidae are typical inhabitants of the water column, and some of them, especially the Antarctic krill, from which a variety of foodstuffs have now been learned, form huge aggregations. Euphausiids are the main food of many baleen whales, fish, and some marine mammals.

Much richer in species (over 8 thousand) is the order of decapod crustaceans, which includes almost all commercial crustaceans. Their gills are completely covered by the cephalothoracic shield. Body shapes are varied, with the most typical being shrimp, crustacean, and crab. The decapods got their name because of the eight pairs of thoracic limbs, the three anterior ones turned into maxillas, so that only five pairs, as a rule, are single-branched, serve for movement. Floating forms of decapods have an elongated, more or less laterally compressed body, a long abdomen, and strongly developed abdominal legs. Such crustaceans are called shrimp, shrimps, or chilims. The first of these names is of French origin, the second is of English origin, and the third, apparently, is the word "shrimp" distorted in the East. Shrimp meat, mainly the muscles of the abdomen, is wonderful in taste and is considered the most valuable delicacy product.

Off the coast of southern Sakhalin and in the south of the Kuril Islands, a green or brownish herbal shrimp, most often called chilim, is common. It lives at a shallow depth in thickets of sea grass, reaching a length of 15, rarely 18 cm. The same size is the shrimp bear cub, but it has a more massive body and a strong prickly shell. Several species of this genus have been found in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, living at greater depths than grass shrimp. Many crawling and burrowing decapods have an elongated cylindrical or slightly flattened body in the dorsal-abdominal direction, outwardly somewhat resembling crayfish. Only in the south of the Kuril Islands was found a mole shrimp with a soft light gray shell, reaching a length of 9 cm. It lives in burrows dug by claws in the muddy sand.

The body shape of hermit crabs is very peculiar. The front part of their body is covered with a shell, while the rather massive long abdomen is naked and soft. His cancer hides in empty shells of gastropod mollusks. In connection with this way of life, the abdomen of the hermit crab is asymmetrical and twisted, since the cavity in the shell of the mollusk is also twisted in the form of a spiral, and it is held in it with the help of steering and shortened hind pectoral legs. As the animal grows, it must change its “home”. With the right claw, which is much larger than the left, the hermit crab covers the mouth of the shell in case of danger.

The most valuable invertebrate animal of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk - the king crab, from the point of view of scientists, is not a crab at all. Only the crab-like body shape, which is characterized by a weak development of the abdomen, brings it closer to real crabs. Bending under the powerful cephalothorax, which makes up the entire body of the animal visible from above, it is completely invisible. In fact, the king crab is closer to hermit crabs than real crabs, and belongs to the craboid family. In more primitive representatives of this family - small sculpin craboids and stone craboids - the abdomen is rather large, has the appearance of a soft air sac and is only partially bent under the cephalothorax. In real craboids, including commercial ones, the abdomen is small, flattened, calcified and completely bent under the cephalothorax. Outwardly, craboids are easy to distinguish from crabs: in addition to a pair of claws, they have not four, but three pairs of walking legs, since the posterior pair of pectoral legs is greatly reduced and bent down.

Kamchatka crab is one of the largest representatives of the arthropod type. The width of its cephalothoracic shield can reach 25 cm, the span of its legs is one and a half meters, and its weight is 7 kg. True, the average weight of a male caught in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is much less - only 1800. The Kamchatka crab makes large migrations, so its pectoral legs are especially strongly developed. Delicacy products are made just from the muscles of the legs, while the internal organs located under the cephalothoracic shield are unsuitable for eating. The bluish blood of crabs contains a respiratory pigment, which includes copper, and not iron, as in the hemoglobin of vertebrates.

The king crab is widely distributed in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, but forms the largest concentrations off the western coast of Kamchatka. Its shoals annually move here for distances from 70 to 180 km. The king crab winters in this area at a considerable depth exceeding 200 m. The water temperature here is noticeably higher than at shallower depths, and is + 1.5 ° C. In the spring, when the coastal waters begin to warm up, the king crab comes to the shore. At this time, females molt and after molting mate with males. The fertilized eggs are glued to the abdominal legs of the female, where they hatch. Later, molting occurs in males. Having completed the mating season, crabs migrate to forage fields, crawling from one field to another as they become scarce and eating small mollusks, crustaceans and polychaete worms. In the same genus as the king crab, there are two more species that are somewhat smaller, but just as tasty - spiny and blue crabs.

Real crabs are the largest group of decapod crustaceans, numbering about 4.5 thousand species, but they are distributed mainly in the tropics and subtropics. In the seas of the USSR, their fauna is very poor. In the coastal waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, medium-sized quadrangular and pentagonal hairy crabs are often found; to the south, off the coast of southern Sakhalin and the southern part of the Kuril Islands, fast-running coastal crabs attract attention. All crabs are edible in principle, but only the snow crab can be of commercial importance, the diameter of the cephalothorax shell of which reaches 16 cm. relatives whose right claw is always much larger than the left. It got its name from the fact that, having sharp claws, it easily cuts the nets if it gets caught in them. In total, at least 100 species of decapod crayfish live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Sea spider class. This class is usually ranked, along with horseshoe crabs, as a subphylum of chelicerate arthropods, which includes a large group of mainly terrestrial arachnids. However, their association is largely arbitrary, since sea spiders are very different from real arachnids. They are usually small animals with a narrow body, disproportionately small compared to very long legs. The head section bears a trunk and a pair of clawed limbs, palps, oviparous legs and walking legs. The three subsequent segments each have a pair of legs, and the rear of them at the end, in addition, has a small tail. Sea spiders are sedentary animals and feed by sucking out hydroids, less often sponges, sea anemones or bryozoans. At least 30 species of sea spiders live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk; the leg span of the largest of them reaches 20 cm.

type of shellfish. Along with crustaceans, mollusks are of the greatest commercial importance among invertebrates. The body of mollusks usually consists of a head with a mouth opening, a sac-like body in which the internal organs are located, and a muscular organ - the legs. Most mollusks are characterized by a calcareous shell, arranged differently in different groups. Often the shell covers the entire body of the animal, sometimes only part of it. In the course of a long evolution in the type of mollusks, various, outwardly very dissimilar forms have developed, which also differ in the level of organization.

Among the very primitive mollusks are shell mollusks, or chitons. Their body, elongated oval, convex from above and flat from below, is covered from above with a skeleton consisting of 8 calcareous plates, which are movably connected to each other. The chiton torn off from the ground immediately rolls up into a ball. In some chitons, calcareous plates are completely or partially hidden under the skin. With the help of the leg, which occupies most of the lower surface of the body, on both sides of which the gills are located, chitons slowly crawl along the bottom. Their nervous system is arranged extremely primitively and is devoid of the brain and any other nerve nodes. At least 20 species of chitons live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, including the largest of them, Steller's cryptochiton, reaching a length of 33 cm and weighing about a kilogram. The plates of this chiton are completely hidden under brown skin.

The gastropod molluscs, which make up a separate, most numerous (about 85 thousand species) class, are much more complex, their central nervous system consists of several pairs of nerve nodes, or ganglia; they have marked eyes, balance coordination, and other sense organs. Most gastropods carry a shell, usually spirally twisted, less often cap-shaped, ear-like or saucer-shaped. Gastropods live both on land (for example, slugs and snails) and in fresh waters (livebearers, pond snails and coils), but still most of them live in the seas.

On the rocky coast, you can always see sea limpets with a low-conical shell, capable of sticking very firmly to the rocks and therefore not afraid of the strongest surf. This mollusk has a well-defined “instinct at home”, and, slowly crawling along the rock and eating the smallest organisms, it always returns to the very place where it started the journey.

In the same place, in the tidal zone, small dark-colored coastal snails are found in large quantities - littorins with a rounded or kubariform shell. At low tide, they draw their body into the shell, and close the mouth with a horny cap. In a state of torpor, littorinas can stay up to a week or even more (different species have different ability to tolerate drying out). Shore snails feed mainly on plants.

The larger umbilical snail with a spherical strong shell is reputed to be a predator. The cap in some species is calcareous, in others it is horny. These snails have developed a number of adaptations for digging shells out of the ground and extracting food from them. The lime of the victim's shell is softened by an acidic secretion from the drill gland, and then a hole is drilled using a grater, which is found in most gastropods. The umbilical snail lays eggs in a rounded dark masonry of sand.

Carnivores and corpse-eaters are many of the most highly organized gastropods, including purple snails and trumpeters. These mollusks have a siphon in the lower part of their shell, i.e., a drawn lower part of the mouth with a channel in the middle. Trumpeters are the largest gastropods of our seas, covered by fishing; their shell reaches a height of 25 cm. Purple snails, close to trumpeters, got their name by analogy: from one of their species living in the Mediterranean Sea, in ancient times they mined dye for the purple clothes of Roman emperors.

Some gastropods lack shells. The most colorful of them - nudibranch mollusks - are so named because the respiratory organs - the gills are located directly on their body and are not covered by anything.

Most gastropod mollusks lead a benthic lifestyle. In more primitive forms, the larva develops in the water column, while in more complex forms, juveniles form inside the clutch. However, some groups of gastropods are known to live in the aquatic environment. These include pteropods, the leg of which forms lateral pterygoid lobes that are used for swimming.

At least 400 species of gastropods live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk; several dozen of them may be of commercial importance.

The class of bivalves in terms of the abundance of species (about 15 thousand) ranks second after the gastropods, but their role in the economy of nature is more significant. Many bivalves (such as mussels) reach exceptionally high numbers in their habitats. The shell of these mollusks consists of. two - right and left - valves, connected by an elastic ligament and often, in addition, by special protrusions-teeth, which correspond to a notch on the opposite valve. Their body in connection with a sedentary or motionless way of life has become somewhat simplified. So, in the course of evolution, bivalves literally “lost their heads”, and at the same time all the organs associated with it, as well as their throats. The gills, on the contrary, have undergone significant complication and, in addition to the function of respiration, have acquired additional functions. It is they that form an important part of the water-moving device that creates currents of water, and play an important role in straining food from the water, which is sucked into the body of the mollusk and passes through the gills. Thanks to this adaptation, the most primitive bivalves were able to extract particles of organic matter from the soil, while most bivalves are filter feeders and feed on small organisms suspended in the water column.

The sizes of bivalves fluctuate greatly - the length of their shell varies between 2 mm - 140 cm. The mass of the largest of them - tridacnids living in the tropical zone, can reach 200 kg (together with the shell). True, such giants are not found in the seas of the USSR. In total, about 15 thousand species of bivalve mollusks are known that have inhabited marine, brackish and fresh waters, about 4/5 of the total number of which lives in the seas. Bivalve molluscs settle on a variety of soils; among them there are forms that are movably or immovably attached to rocks, stones or shells, crawling on the surface of the soil, burrowing into loose deposits, and even drilling through wood or stones.

In the Far Eastern seas, scallops with a more or less rounded or rounded-triangular shell are of the greatest value. The scallops usually lie on the bottom on the right side, the lower (right) shell valve is more convex, and the upper (left) one is flattened. Both shell valves are furrowed with numerous ribs. A large, white or yellowish shell-closing muscle is used for food. The largest and commercially most valuable Hokkaido scallop is often incorrectly called seaside scallop. Its shell reaches a length of 18 cm. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, this scallop is common in Aniva Bay and in the south of the Kuriles. The main enemies of the scallop are predatory starfish, escaping from which it moves by jumping in a jet way.

Mussels are among the most common bivalves that live on both hard and soft soils. The edible mussel, or black shell, found almost along the entire coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk, is very numerous - triangular-rounded, medium-sized, black-brown or black-blue in color, the length of which approaches 9 cm. Even larger size (up to 20 cm in length) reaches Gray's mussel - a warmer-water species than the edible mussel. We hunt it mainly in the Sea of ​​Japan. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, Gray's mussel is found in Aniva and Patience bays off the coast of southern Sakhalin, as well as in the southern part of the Kuril Islands. Mussels are attached to rocks, stones or to each other by means of a bundle of very strong horn threads, or the so-called byssus. This method of attachment is called mobile, because. the mussel can tear off the threads of the byssus. crawl to a new place and stick again, highlighting new threads.

Motionlessly attached to the substrate, growing to it with a shell, oysters. The giant oyster living in the Far East is a relatively warm-water animal and in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk it is found only in the warmest areas - in the Busse lagoon in the south of Sakhalin Island and in the extreme south of the Kuril chain.

Some bivalve mollusks are even able to penetrate hard substrates such as stone and wood. They belong to the group of drilling organisms - stone borers and wood borers. Off the coast of eastern Sakhalin and the southern part of the Kuril Islands, there is a stone borer - zirfeya. This is a large mollusk up to 10 cm long, with a white fragile shell. The front of the shell is covered with rows of teeth, with which the animal drills a shelter in limestone or other relatively soft rocks. Carpenter mollusks belong to the family of shipworms, so named because of their long, soft, thin, worm-like body, reaching over 25 cm in length. A small spherical white shell is located at the front end of the body, both of its wings are armed with serrated and serrated combs, with which the shipworm drills wood. As the clam drills into the board, it increases in size, and the diameter of its dwelling expands accordingly. As a result, the animal is immured in a tree for life. Interestingly, the sea worm does not feed on wood, but uses the wood substrate as a shelter. At the posterior end of its body there are inlet and outlet siphons, as well as 2 calcareous plates, which, if necessary, close the inlet.

In total, about 300 species of bivalves live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, of which about 20 species are of interest to fishers. Larger forms are suitable for eating, and small ones are suitable for making flour.

cephalopods. If, due to a sedentary or immobile lifestyle, the body of bivalve mollusks has noticeably simplified, then mobile and dynamic cephalopods have undergone significant progressive evolution and have become the most highly organized representatives of the world of invertebrates. It is no coincidence that cephalopods are sometimes called the primates of the sea. Their characteristic feature is the absence of a shell, which was gradually reduced and preserved only in the most primitive living cephalopod - the nautilus, an inhabitant of the tropics. The tentacles located around the mouth on the head, from which the cephalopods got their name, developed from the leg, on which gastropods, shellfish and other molluscs still crawl. In nautilus, the number of tentacles reaches several tens, in octopuses there are eight, and in squid and cuttlefish - ten. Each tentacle bears one or two, rarely three or four longitudinal rows of suckers. True, as some fiction writers claimed not so long ago, cephalopods cannot suck blood from the victim with the help of these suckers, since their bottom is closed. All cephalopods are predators, attacking not only small, but also rather large animals, such as crabs and fish. The prey is captured and held by tentacles with suction cups, and the horny beak, which is located in the muscular throat, serves to kill it. Cephalopods can move in water very quickly, and they do this with the help of a kind of jet engine. Its device is peculiar: the inner end of the tube, which is called a funnel, or siphon, and goes outside near the head of the mollusk, leads into the vast internal cavity of the animal. Having sucked water through the crack, the cephalopod then forcefully pushes it out through the funnel. In this case, a reactive force arises, which moves the mollusk in the direction opposite to the direction of the siphon.

Cephalopods have a highly developed nervous system, and the brain, which in octopuses is hidden in a cartilaginous capsule - some kind of skull, is distinguished by the complexity of the structure. The eyes of cephalopods are also complex and reach record sizes - up to 40 cm in diameter in giant octopuses, which is almost three times the diameter of the eye of the giant of the oceans - the blue whale.

Many cephalopods are able to change color, bringing it into line with the surrounding background. About one quarter of cephalopod species, especially those living at considerable depths, can glow.

Some of the cephalopods prefer the water column for life, while others prefer sheltered places on the bottom of the sea, from where they lie in wait for prey. Most squids and some octopuses are excellent swimmers, while cuttlefish and most octopuses lead a bottom-dwelling lifestyle. The main food of cephalopods is fish, crabs and bivalves, as well as cephalopods, including individuals of their species.

In countries South- East Asia and the Mediterranean, even in ancient times, the taste and nutritional qualities of mollusks were valued. In the USSR, a significant number of cephalopods began to be hunted relatively recently, but already now the demand of the population for products from them has exceeded supply. Squids and octopuses are sold in the form of canned food, semi-finished products and in kind. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, commercial accumulations of cephalopods are found mainly near southern Sakhalin and in the south of the Kuril Islands; in total, over 40 species of these animals live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, including the Kuril region.

Type tentacled. Of this type of sessile, mainly marine animals, bryozoans are the most numerous and widespread. Their colonies are usually calcified and have a branched, bushy, leaf-like, crusty or lumpy shape, but sometimes they also form openwork nets. The color of the colonies is white, gray or bright, usually orange or red. Individual individuals of bryozoans rarely exceed 1 mm in length. In appearance, worm-like, these animals are enclosed in a calcareous or gelatinous cell with a hole. Protruding every now and then the front end, which carries the mouth with a simple or horseshoe-shaped corolla of tentacles around it, seated with cilia, bryozoans drive food particles to the mouth with them. In the tropics, along with coral polyps and calcareous algae, bryozoans play an important role in the formation of reefs. Building their skeletons of lime, many of them contribute to the accumulation of calcium carbonate on the bottom of the seas and oceans. Such soils with an abundance of shells and bryozoan skeletons are characteristic, for example, of the South Kuril Strait. Of the 3,000 known species of bryozoans, more than 200 live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Some of them are found here in large numbers, especially on pebble soils at a depth of 30-50 m.

Brachiopod type. Their heyday passed many millions of years ago, back in the Paleozoic, when there were several thousand species of brachiopods, now a little more than three hundred are known. These are exclusively marine solitary attached animals, the body of which is enclosed in a bivalve shell, but unlike mollusks, the valves cover the brachiopods not from the sides, but from the dorsal and ventral sides. The most primitive forms burrow into the ground with the help of a long fleshy stalk, or leg, which is attached to the bottom of the mink. Most prefer a solid substrate, growing to it with a shortened stem or lower valve. The body of the animal itself occupies only the lower part of the space between the valves. On both sides of the mouth, two "arms" extend - spirally twisted long outgrowths, seated with a double row of small tentacles, which in turn are covered with cilia. These "arms" occupy the front of the space inside the shell and. creating a current of water by the movement of cilia, they serve for nutrition and respiration. Only six species of brachiopods live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. In the north and near the Sea of ​​Okhotsk coast of the middle and northern Kuril Islands, one of them is found even at low tide.

Type of chaetognaths. The transparent body of these animals resembles an arrow and consists of the head, trunk and tail sections. The mouth located at the anterior end of the head is surrounded by a powerful chitinous trapping apparatus of bristles and teeth. Chaetognaths are typical marine predators; most of them spend their entire lives in the water column, although there are also crawling forms. For swimming, they have fins on the sides of the body and on the tail. Fish, including salmon, willingly eat chaetognaths, whose body length can reach 9 cm. Of the 140 known species of chaetognaths, only 13 live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, of which 7 are deep-sea.

Type echinoderm. This type includes many animals of extremely peculiar appearance: starfish, sea urchins, serpenttails, sea lilies and holothurians, or sea capsules. They are characterized by a calcareous skeleton, which in most groups is clearly visible from the outside, while in holothurians it consists of microscopic calcareous bodies, or needles. The vast majority of echinoderms lead a benthic lifestyle, but their larvae usually develop in the water column. The nervous system and sense organs are poorly developed.

Sea lilies class. Externally, sea lilies bear little resemblance to animals. Like the ancient fossil echinoderms, their mouth opening is at the top, and not on the underside of the body and not in front, like in the rest of the living echinoderms. This is due to the fact that the ancestors of echinoderms led an attached lifestyle, which today is inherited by only a part of sea lilies. The body of the sea line consists of a small body, or calyx, and five long rays, or arms, extending from it, which bifurcate near the base. This gives the impression that there are ten rays. In more primitive lilies, a long stem descends from the calyx, with which they are attached to the bottom. In other lilies that lead a floating lifestyle, the stalk is usually lost and a bunch of antennae develops instead. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, only three species of crinoids are known, living at depths of more than 120 m.

Sea stars justify their name - their body really looks like a star, there are usually five rays, less often six or more. The central disk, from which the rays depart, is by no means always clearly expressed, therefore the whole body consists, as it were, of one rays, connected by bases. The starfish moves with the help of soft small sucker legs located in the grooves on the underside of the rays. Despite their small mouth, underdeveloped musculature, and low speed of movement, most starfish are active predators, attacking mainly bivalve mollusks, as well as sea urchins, worms, and other large invertebrates, and even fish.

Opening the shells, the star takes not by force, but by patience. She clasps the shell with her rays, and with her legs firmly sticks to the wings. Stubbornly and methodically trying to move them apart, the predator achieves that the muscle-terminator of the shell of the mollusk is tired and relaxed. Then another wonderful mechanism comes into play: the starfish turns its stomach out through its mouth and envelops the soft body of the mollusk (or other prey) with it. Having digested the prey, the predator crawls to a new place. Starfish are a real disaster for oyster and indium jars, coral reefs, and cultivated invertebrate plantations. Their ability to regenerate is very well expressed: a whole star can grow from one torn off beam.

In most starfish, fertilization is external; larval development passes through several free-floating forms. But it is in the Far Eastern waters that stars without floating larvae are not uncommon. Their eggs mature either in clutches covered with a disk and rays, or in tangles near the mother's mouth, or the eggs and juveniles develop inside the mother's body, and then we can observe cases of live birth.

More than 80 species of starfish have been identified in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. It was here, or rather in Broughton Bay on the Sea of ​​Okhotsk coast of Simushir Island (middle Kurile Islands), that several years ago, an employee of the Institute of Marine Biology V.I. rays 98 cm.

Serpenttails, or brittle stars, are somewhat reminiscent of starfish, but their body is always sharply divided into a disk and thin, long, sometimes branching rays. Usually these are small animals with a ray span of 1-3 cm, but some forms, for example, a gorgonocephalus with branched tentacles, reach a ray span of 1 m with a disk diameter of up to 143 mm. At least 50 species of brittle stars are known in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

The mouth of starfish, serpentine, and sea urchins is at the bottom; they are crawling animals.

Sea urchins are globular, heart-shaped, or disc-shaped organisms; their body is covered with needles, the length and thickness of which varies greatly in different forms. Their whole body is enclosed in a shell, consisting of calcareous plates fastened together and pierced with holes. Needles are movably attached to the shell, which serve not only for protection, but also, along with sucker legs, for movement. The mouth opening is equipped with five teeth of a special chewing apparatus - the Aristotelian lantern. Hedgehogs eat both plant and animal food. Some species of them cause significant damage to seaweed thickets. Most hedgehogs crawl along the bottom, but many are able to burrow and live in minks. Round sea urchins are eaten, and in a number of countries their canned caviar is highly valued. About ten species of sea urchins live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, at least three of which may be of commercial importance.

Of all the echinoderms, lovers of sea delicacies are most familiar with sea capsules, or holothurians, which include the famous trepang. The body of holothurians is rather soft, more or less worm-like, the mouth is located at the anterior end and is surrounded by a corolla of short unbranched or long branched tentacles. Most of them have five double rows of sucker legs, but worm-like forms lacking legs are also known. Holothurians lead a bottom lifestyle, but one genus lives only in the water column. Over 30 species of holothurians live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, of which only two are commercial - trepang and Japanese cucumaria. Trepang is found in very small numbers in the extreme south of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, off the coast of southern Sakhalin and Kunashir Island. Kuku City Hall is more widespread, but a significant concentration forms, apparently, a quiet in the South Kurnl Strait, between the islands of Shikotan and Kunashir.

Type chordates. This vast phylum, along with vertebrates, includes a number of much more primitive animals, of which we will focus only on tunicate subtype, or larval-chordates. They live alone or in colonies, in an attached or free-floating state; the dorsal string, or chord, is located in their tail section of the body. True, in most tunicates, the notochord exists only in larvae and subsequently disappears. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, representatives of ascidian class- solitary or colonial, almost exclusively attached organisms. Their body is in the form of a bag, one end attached to the substrate. At the opposite end there are two short protrusions - inlet and outlet siphons. The body of the tunicates is enclosed in a special dense shell, or tunic, consisting of a substance close to fiber.

In connection with the sessile-attached lifestyle, the organization of the body of adult ascidians is significantly simplified even in comparison with the structure of the larva; this especially applies to the nervous system and organs of vision - the latter are present in the larva, but absent in the adult animal. Some sea squirts form large ones; often brightly colored forms. Ascidia have no commercial value in our country, although some of their species could become a source of such a valuable element as vanadium, which they accumulate in their bodies.

Vertebrate subtype. Representatives of this subtype live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. fish classes and mammals; sea ​​snakes belonging to the class of reptiles are absent here.

Of the nearly 300 species of fish, over 20 species are anadromous and brackish and more than 50 species are deep-sea. The largest number of species (10 or more) in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk are families of flounders (25 species), northern gobies, or sculpins, or slingshots (over 40 species), sea chanterelles, or agony, similar in structure to slingshot gobies (18 species), eelpouts (more than 35 species), lipar, or sea slugs (41 species), lumpfish, or round-finned, sticheevy and salmon (10 species each).

Of this multitude of fish, only salmon occupy a leading place in the fishery, but even then not all of them, but only chum salmon, pink salmon, sockeye salmon, or red salmon, then coho salmon and chinook salmon. In third place are real salmon - Kamchatka salmon and loaches - kunja and malma. The role of sima is not so noticeable in the fishery, and near the Sakhalin coast - Sakhalin taimen, or lentils.

Flounder fish are less valued, the meat of which is much cheaper than salmon, with the exception, perhaps, only of white-skinned and black, or blue-skinned, halibut. Flounders belong to the order of flounders, which are very well adapted to the bottom way of life: their body is strongly flattened from the sides, on one of which (right or left - in different families of flounders in different ways) the fish lies on the ground. This side of the body is colored lighter, and the eyes are shifted to the functionally upper, darker side. In real flounders - representatives of the flounder family, which only live in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk, the eyes are on the right, although in some species there are separate left-sided forms. In addition to halibut, such flounders as yellow-bellied, yellow-finned, star-shaped, and some other species are of great importance in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Many flounders burrow into the ground, and they do this extremely quickly. These fish are also interesting in the ability to quickly change the color of their upper (eye) side of the body, amazingly accurately adjusting it to the color and pattern of the ground, so that they become almost invisible.

Scientists consider the whitefish, smelt and salanx families to be close relatives of salmon. Of the whitefish, mainly living in fresh waters, the Amur whitefish is found in the Amur Estuary and near northern Sakhalin. Of the smelt fish in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, toothed and small-mouthed smelt, as well as capelin, or hake, are common.

Anadromous fish noodles belong to the Salanx family, sometimes invading the mouths of some rivers in masses. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, it is often found in the Amur Estuary and in the Baikal Bay in the north of Sakhalin Island.

The salmon-like order also includes some deep-sea and therefore little-known families of fish, for example, silverfish, bathylag, and some others.

One can not say much about the value of sturgeon, including the Sakhalin sturgeon, but it is very rare, only recorded in Aniva Bay and the Amur Estuary. In the same estuary, there are also Amur sturgeon and a much larger relative of sturgeon than sturgeons, a relative of the beluga - kaluga, reaching a length of 5.6 m with a mass of 380 kg. The main habitat of the Amur sturgeon and Kaluga is the Amur River. The catch of sturgeon fish in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is extremely insignificant.

The Pacific herring is of much greater commercial importance, having chosen for spawning coastal areas in the north of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and off the coast of Sakhalin and Kamchatka.

The only species of cyprinids that live not in fresh, but in brackish and sea waters is the Far Eastern rudd, or ugai. This fish reaches a length of 50 cm and weighs up to 1.5 kg. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the rudd lives in the Aniva Bay, as well as in the west, in the Amur Estuary, the Bay of Happiness and to the north, up to the Shantar Islands. Ugay serves mainly as an object of amateur fishing.

Pacific cod is ubiquitous in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, but its largest concentrations are noted off the western coast of Kamchatka. Being a subspecies of the Atlantic cod, pasha cod differs from it in a larger and wider head, bottom caviar and, unfortunately, coarser and less tasty meat. The length of the Pacific cod reaches 120 cm.

If cod is the most numerous cod fish in the Atlantic Ocean, pollock undoubtedly belongs to the Pacific Ocean. Pollock is much smaller than cod, its meat is less tasty, but its liver contains more vitamin A than the famous cod liver, from which medical fish oil is rendered. Pollock is widespread in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, especially in its northwestern and northern parts, as well as off the coast of Sakhalin and Kamchatka.

Unlike cod, the Pacific saffron cod is so unlike its northern namesake that it is distinguished as an independent species. It is found off the coast of all the Far Eastern seas, is tasty and serves as an object of not only commercial, but also amateur fishing, usually in winter, when saffron cod is suitable for spawning.

Sticklebacks are a special family of small fish with foldable spines on their back and belly and often with bony plate armor on the sides of the body. Along the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk there is a three-spined stickleback (with three spines on its back). The stickleback is considered a "weedy" fish, but its fat has valuable properties and is used in medicine for the treatment of wounds, as well as for technical purposes. Another species, the nine-spined stickleback, was recorded at the mouth of the Amur and in the brackish waters of lagoons and bays. The male stickleback is known as a caring family man. The object of his special troubles is a nest, which he builds from various plant residues, sticking them together with sticky threads. Usually it is fixed either on the ground (in the three-spined stickleback), or on the stems of underwater plants (in the nine-spined stickleback),

The perch-like order includes a large number of fish families of a very diverse, often rather bizarre shape. True, only a few of them are of commercial importance in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. To the suborder of dog-like perch-like fish belong fish with an elongated, often eel-shaped body, bearing very long dorsal and anal fins and covered with small scales. Many of them, especially those without scales, are called by the local population "loaches" or "burbots", although real loaches are freshwater fish from the cyprinid order, and burbots are freshwater and marine fish from the cod-like order.

Large sizes, over 1 m in length, reach the eastern catfish. Its relatively large head is armed with large teeth, giving it an intimidating appearance. This fish is equipped not only with sharp teeth in front, but also tubercular and conical teeth located on the palate and on the lower jaw behind the canine-shaped anterior ones. Such an “arsenal” is required for catfish not so much for defense or attack, but for tearing off mollusks, crustaceans and echinoderms from the bottom, on which it mainly feeds. Its meat is quite tasty, but catfish are almost never caught in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk; in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the eastern catfish is found in the Ayan region, in Aniva Bay and in the south of the Kuril Islands.

The eastern viviparous eelpout is interesting in that it does not spawn, but gives birth to (usually several dozen) fry. The Germans still call the European subspecies close to it "the acne mother". According to legend, for a long time German fishermen could not find out how and where the common eel breeds, and innocently believed that the eel gives birth to eels. The same family of eelpouts also includes lycods, some of which reach 0.7-1 m in length. These cold-water bottom fish usually live on silty bottoms, sometimes burrowing into loose substrate.

The well-known Japanese mackerel, numerous in Peter the Great Bay, off the coast of southern Sakhalin and in the south of the Kuril Islands, belongs to the mackerel suborder. In favorable years for her, she also penetrates to the north - up to Okhotsk. Mackerel length 50-60 cm with a maximum weight of 1.5-1.7 kg. Making constantly significant migrations, this fish penetrates into our seas only when the waters warm up to 8-10 ° and more.

Also numerous in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is a detachment of scorpionfish close to the perciformes. The scorpionfish family includes commercial sea bass, scorpionfish, or sea ruffs, and spiny cheeks. In contrast to the scorpionfishes, which are widespread in various oceans, the suborder of the greenlings inhabited only the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. Only two families belong to it, one of which, which includes coal fish valuable in its taste, unfortunately, is absent in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Representatives of another family of greenlings - one-feathered and eyebrowed greenlings - are common here. They can be distinguished by a long dorsal fin, which in a single-finned greenling has no notch, while in a browed one it has a noticeable notch approximately in the middle. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, several species of browed greenlings are of commercial importance: brown, spotted and red, or hare-headed. The one-finned greenling is found in small numbers in Aniva Bay and in the south of the Kuril Islands. The meat of different species of these fish varies in taste and even in color. In some species, it is green or bluish, but when cooked, however, it becomes discolored. In the trading network, greenlings are often sold under the name sea bass, which is not true.

The scorpion-like order also includes an extensive suborder of sculpins, the skin of which is usually not covered with normal scales and is either naked or bears plates, spines or tubercles. Many representatives of this suborder are often called gobies, although real gobies belong to another order - perciformes. The appearance of sea chanterelles is peculiar: their body is covered, like armor, with regular longitudinal rows of plates. These are small, up to 20 cm in length, bottom fish, the body shape of which often resembles a spindle. They are not eaten, but after soaking in a solution of formalin and alcohol, followed by drying, original souvenirs come out of them.

Sea slugs, completely devoid of scales, large-headed, with soft muscles and thin, often transparent skin, and you can’t even call fish right away - they so strikingly resemble tadpoles. Their ventral fins merge and form a sucker. The genus Kaleprocts is especially richly represented in our country, for which the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, apparently, is the ancestral home. In any case, about half of all known species of this genus (22 out of 48) live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Sea slugs spawn in winter. The female by this time grows an ovipositor in the form of a long leathery tube. With the help of this device, she lays mature eggs in the peribranchial cavity of the king crab. Here, the eggs are inaccessible to predators and are provided with oxygen, since the gills of the crab are constantly washed by water.

Of the few representatives of cartilaginous fish in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, only one species of small spiny shark, or katran, rarely reaches a length of 2 m and weighs about 14 kg. This shark does not spawn, but gives birth to small (20-26 cm long) sharks. The spiny shark is edible, and many find its meat even delicious. One or two species of skates recorded in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk - strongly flattened benthic cartilaginous - have no commercial value.

mammals. The Sea of ​​Okhotsk with the Kuril Islands adjacent to it has long been mastered by marine hunters. A number of valuable mammals lived here, for example, the sea otter, or sea otter, seal, various whales, etc. But in the second half of the 19th century, as a result of the invasion of poachers from the USA, Canada, Germany, Norway, Japan and England, the stocks of marine mammals in Sea of ​​Okhotsk were severely undermined, some species were completely exterminated (walrus and bowhead whale) or were on the verge of extinction. Particularly affected was the sea otter, or sea otter, the only marine representative of a vast order of predators. The sea otter belongs to the marten family, and, indeed, is quite close to another representative of the marten - the river otter. The fur merchants, who called it the sea, or Kamchatka, beaver, apparently drew attention to some external similarity between the fur of the beaver and the sea otter, but the beaver belongs to another order - rodents. The sea otter is a rather large animal, especially in comparison with its relatives: the body length of the male can reach almost 1.5, and the female - 1.3 m with a weight of up to 42 and 36 kg, respectively. The delicate and silky fur of the sea otter is extremely durable, which naturally further enhances its value. Despite its marine "registration", the sea otter is less adapted to the aquatic lifestyle than pinnipeds and cetaceans. In particular, he has practically no subcutaneous fat. Sea otters keep close to the coast and are not inclined to embark on long journeys.

An elongated valky body with a shortened neck, hind limbs strongly shifted to the lower end of the body and a shortened flattened tail prevent the sea otter from moving freely on land, but it helps him when hunting for various marine animals. Sea otters feed mainly on sedentary large invertebrates: sea urchins, crabs, gastropods and bivalves, usually endowed with a solid external skeleton. In this regard, their molars are very wide, strongly flattened and millstone-shaped. Back in the 18th and even partly in the 19th century, sea otters were found in abundance in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk off the coast of southwestern Kamchatka, all the Kuril Islands and southeastern Sakhalin. Nowadays, the sea otter is common only off the coast of some islands in the northern and middle parts of the Kuriles.

pinnipeds. By structure, pinnipeds are close to terrestrial predatory animals, but stand out as an independent detachment adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. Their body is elongated, spindle-shaped, balky, the head, devoid of a neck constriction, smoothly passes into the body. With the help of flippers, the fingers of which are connected by swimming membranes, pinnipeds move in the water. The hind limbs, strongly shifted back, impart a forward movement to the animal, bending like the tail of a fish. The front flippers act as rudders. A thick subcutaneous fat layer, and in young seals, as well as fur seals, and warm fur help to endure low temperatures in the aquatic environment. Pinnipeds feed on fish, mollusks, crustaceans and other large invertebrates.

Pinnipeds include families of eared and true seals, as well as walruses, which were once found in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. AT recent times many researchers believe that eared and true seals originated from different groups of predators: eared from primitive bear-like seals, and true seals from primitive mustelids. Spending most of their lives in the water, the pinnipeds, however, could not completely break away from the land, at least from a solid substrate. In the first days of life, seal cubs, once in the water, die from the wetting of the fur cover and subsequent hypothermia. Since the pup of many seals occurs directly on the ice, their milk contains up to 40% fat. The assertion that seals cause significant damage to fisheries is without sufficient grounds. Most of them feed on low-value fish, except for the spotted seal. does not encroach at all on shoals of salmon and herring.

Two species of eared seals and four species of real ones live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Eared seals (seals and fur seals) when moving on the ground rely on their hind limbs, bending them forward. The largest of them is the sea lion, or sea lion, reaching a length of 4 m and weighing up to 800 kg. True, only males are such healthy men. Although females are inferior to them, they are not at all so small - up to 2.5 m in length with a weight of up to 350 kg. The fur cover of the sea lions consists of coarse sparse hair. Coloration changes with age, from chestnut in juveniles to straw in adults. Their rookeries for breeding young sea lions arrange on secluded rocks or on uninhabited islands. Males acquire "harems", which can include up to several dozen females. "Bachelors" and "youth" lie at a distance from both harems and from each other.

In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, sea lion rookeries have been noted near the Shantar Islands, on the Zavyalov, Yamsky, Iona, Kuril Islands, and sometimes in Zabiyak and Babushkin Bays. Animals live here only in summer, and then they swim south.

The fur seal is undoubtedly the most valuable commercial pinniped animal. It is much smaller than the sea lion, although the male reaches an impressive size - up to 2 m in length. The female is smaller than the male, her body length does not exceed 1.25 m. Not all fur is valued in a cat - the hair itself, like that of other seals, is hard, but soft, thick underfur, which is absent in other seals. Seals come to our seas only for the summer-autumn period for breeding. Like the sea lions, the cat is a polygamous animal. Within the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, fur seals are found on some of the Kuril Islands. On Tyuleniy Island, near Sakhalin, a wildlife reserve has been organized with strictly limited hunting for these animals.

Unlike eared seals, real seals do not have auricles, the hind limbs cannot bend forward and, when animals move on land, they drag along the ground. Four species of true seals live in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk - ringed seal, lionfish, spotted seal and bearded seal.

The inhabitants of the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk often call the ringed seal also akiba, or akipkon. This is the smallest of the Far Eastern seals: its body length does not exceed 140 cm, and its weight is 55 kg. Akiba settled along the western coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk - from the Tauiskaya Bay to the Shantar Islands and the Sakhalin Bay, as well as eastern shores Shelikhov Bay and Sakhalin Island. She is whelping in early spring, in March - April, on the ice near water holes and polynyas, sometimes making holes by itself. The fur of puppies, white, soft and very fluffy, perfectly protects them from the cold and at the same time disguises them. In an adult akiba, light rings clearly appear on the body on a blackish-gray, gray or brownish background. Its coat, relatively denser and longer than that of other true seals, is used for making fur products.

The lionfish is also called Ilyar, hilar, young fish, shelduck, or piebald seal. It is larger than the akiba and reaches a length of 180-190 cm with a mass of up to 100 kg. The lionfish is less connected to the shore than other seals and spends most of its life on the high seas. An air sac located under the skin and communicating with the trachea helps it float on water. It is worth letting the air out of it, as the lionfish immediately sinks.

The male is dark, black or black-brown, the female is gray or brown; against a dark background, light stripes stand out on the sides of the body and in the form of a collar on the neck, as well as in the region of the sacrum. The lionfish does not climb onto the ice floe, clinging to it with its front flippers, as other seals do, but jumps out without touching the edge. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, this piebald seal lives mainly northeast of Sakhalin and south of Babushkin Bay. It lies on high clear ice.

Spotted seals, spotted seals, or spotted seals are characterized by numerous black or brown spots on a yellow or gray background; the flippers are also spotted. The length of the body in rare cases can exceed 2 m. Pied usually settles in lagoons, bays and small bays, penetrating south to the coast of Japan and Korea, that is, further than our other seals. Feeding mainly on fish - in the summer, mainly salmon, - during their course, the spotted seal often rises into the rivers for considerable distances. In summer, in the northern part of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, almost everywhere you can observe its coastal haulouts. Animals remain here until the onset of ice or even further. In the north of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, spotted seals breed in April. Its commercial accumulations are noted in the southern part of Shelikhov Bay and near southern Sakhalin.

Lakhtak, or sea hare, is the largest representative of the true seal family in the Far Eastern seas. Its body reaches a length of 230 cm and weighs up to 280 kg. The color is monophonic, ashy or gray, without spots. Unlike akiba, lionfish and spotted seals, bearded seal cubs are not white, but light ashy in color. Bearded seals feed not on fish, but on large benthic invertebrates - molluscs, echinoderms, crustaceans, etc. Therefore, bearded seals usually stay near the coast, foraging at depths of up to 100 m.

In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk bearded seal is most numerous in the northern and western regions, as well as in the Gulf of Patience.

cetaceans. In contrast to the sea otter and pinnipeds, cetaceans have become typical aquatic animals, although they breathe, like all mammals, atmospheric air. Most cetaceans, especially large ones, die when they dry out, suffocating under the weight of their own body. With their torpedo-shaped body, these animals resemble fish, but the blades of the caudal fin are not located in a vertical, like in fish, but in a horizontal plane. auricles, the coat and hind limbs of cetaceans have completely disappeared, and the forelimbs have turned into flippers and function as rudders. The tail serves as the main organ of movement in the water.

All neoplasms in this detachment are purely adaptive. The dorsal fin gives the animal greater stability. Bare, elastic, non-wetted skin weakens the friction of water on the surface of his body during rapid movement. Other adaptations include a powerful subcutaneous fat cover, the development of bundles of blood vessels in the fins of a special device important for thermoregulation, a sharply increased content of respiratory pigments - hemoglobin in the blood and myoglobin in the muscles ... Thanks to these and a number of other acquisitions, cetaceans can be in water up to 50 minutes, and sperm whales up to 1.5 hours, plunging hundreds of meters deep.

For life in the sea, an echolocation apparatus is indispensable, which has become the main means of orientation in the water for cetaceans. The exceptionally high calorie content of milk, containing up to 53% fat and up to 13.4% protein, should also be attributed to the number of adaptations to an aquatic lifestyle. The fact that the cub is born with its tail, and not head first, allows it not to suffocate during childbirth.

The cetacean order includes two suborders - baleen and toothed. Until now, disputes about their origin do not stop. Some scientists believe that these suborders originated from common ancestors - some ancient predators. Others deduce the genealogy of baleen and toothed whales from different groups, and explain the similarities by adaptation to an aquatic lifestyle.

The suborder of baleen whales includes the families of minke whales, right whales and gray whales. It was baleen, especially smooth, whales that for a long time were the object of predatory fishing by foreigners in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. That's why there aren't many of them now. Making extensive migrations in the ocean, baleen whales enter the Sea of ​​Okhotsk in the summer for fattening. The filtering apparatus with which they extract food is noteworthy. This is nothing more than a set (130-400 on each side) of horny plates - a whalebone, with which the palatine processes of the maxillary bones are equipped. The inner edge of the plate is split into a mass of bristles resembling a fringe. Teeth in adult baleen whales are completely absent.

The largest whale and, in general, the largest animal that has ever existed on Earth is the blue whale, whose length can reach 33 m. Nowadays, this giant can only occasionally be seen in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, where it sometimes comes for feeding, holding on mainly in the Kuril region.

The second largest minke whale, reaching 27 m in length, is the herring whale, or fin whale. This is one of the most important commercial whales, often visiting the Sea of ​​Okhotsk during the warm season. In the south of the Kuril Islands, not as large as blue and herring whales, willow whales, or sei whales (up to 18.6 m in length) are quite numerous. A frequent visitor to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Kuril Islands, and the smallest of minke whales (up to 10 m in length) is small.

The humpback whale, or humpback whale, belongs to another genus, but to the same family of striped whales. The humpback whale's body is thicker and less slender than that of minke whales; pectoral fins are very large. The length of humpbacks is up to 17 m.

The food of striped whales depends on their location. They feed mainly on various crustaceans, mainly Euphausiidae, fish and, to a lesser extent, cephalopods and pteropods.

Of the smooth whales in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, only the Japanese whale is found - the North Pacific subspecies of the southern right whale, reaching a length of 20 m. Previously, this whale was found in large numbers near the Shantar Islands, in the Ola-Tauisky Bay, Penzhinskaya Bay and Kambalnaya Bay, but because of predation foreign whalers (in the middle of the 19th century, up to 250 ship crews beat whales annually in the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk), its reserves were sharply undermined. In the days after right whales were legally protected in 1946, the Japanese whale herd is gradually recovering. But the bowhead whale, represented in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk by a small form - "poggy", could not be saved: "poggy" were completely exterminated in the last century. Right whales feed on small copepods and euphausian crustaceans, as well as pteropods.

Unlike minke whales and smooth whales, the gray whale, allocated to a separate family, gets food at the bottom. The basis of its diet is benthic and benthic crustaceans, mainly amphipods. In the Far Eastern seas of the USSR, the gray whale feeds from May to October. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, it is usually found off the Shantar Islands and off the western coast of Kamchatka. In length, the gray whale reaches 15 m with a mass of up to 30 tons. Currently, ship fishing for this whale is prohibited.

The suborder of toothed whales is more numerous and rich in species than baleen whales. Representatives of the sperm whale, beaked and dolphin families live in the Far Eastern seas. The appearance of sperm whales is very unattractive: due to the strong development of the fat pad, the head is disproportionately large, and its front part is much longer than the lower jaw. While the upper jaw of sperm whales is almost toothless, the narrow lower jaw is seated with conical teeth, the number of which varies from 8 to 30 pairs. Of the two species of this family - the sperm whale and the pygmy sperm whale - only the sperm whale, the largest of the toothed whales, is found in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The male is much larger than the female - its length can exceed 20 m, while the female does not even reach 16 m. The sperm whale is the best diver among whales. There are cases when sperm whales got entangled in telegraph cables at depths of up to 1128 m and died. The food of these whales is cephalopods and, to a lesser extent, fish. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, sperm whales can often be found in the south and near the Kuril Islands.

Beaked whales are relatively large or medium-sized toothed whales. Their mouth is located at the front end of the head, which is pulled forward, forming a kind of beak. There are no teeth in the upper part, and only one or two pairs (rarely more) in the lower part. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and in the region of the Kuril Islands, the northern swimmer is quite common. This is a medium-sized whale - up to 12 m in length. It feeds mainly on squid, less often on fish. In the USSR, it was almost not mined, especially since its meat and fat are inedible.

The dolphin family is the largest and includes a significant number of small and medium-sized cetaceans, the length of which does not exceed 10 m. Both jaws of most dolphins are full of teeth!

In the cold waters of the seas of the Arctic Ocean, as well as in the northern regions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, there is a beluga whale - a large, up to 6 m long, dolphin, without a dorsal fin. The color of the body in adults is white or yellow, in young ones it is darker. Chasing shoals of salmon, the voracious predator sometimes rises thousands of kilometers upstream the Amur. Once it was discovered even in Argun! Beluga whale lives at the expense of fish, but does not disdain invertebrates and even algae.

The killer whale is the largest representative of the dolphin family. It got its name because of the highly developed and raised dorsal fin, resembling a scythe. This is the most dangerous predator of all marine animals. Its diet consists of fish, cephalopods and marine mammals - cetaceans, pinnipeds and sea otters, and if you're lucky, then birds. Hunting in herds, killer whales attack even very large cetaceans. The swimming speed of killer whales can reach 55 km per hour.

Of the other dolphins in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the white-winged porpoise, the white-barreled dolphin are found, and in the region of the Kuril Islands, in addition, the striped dolphin, northern cetacean, Pacific short-headed and gray dolphins, pilot whale and small, or black, killer whale.

Sea of ​​Okhotsk- one of the largest water basins washing the shores of our country.

Its area - 1,603,000 km 2 - is one and a half times larger than the area of ​​the Sea of ​​Japan and is second only to the Bering Sea, from which it is separated by the Kamchatka Peninsula. A chain of acting and extinct volcanoes The Kuril island ridge, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is fenced off from the Pacific Ocean, and the islands of Hokkaido and Sakhalin - from the Sea of ​​Japan. Penzhina Bay in the north, Udskaya in the west, Tugursky, Academies, Patience and Aniva bays in the south go deep into the land. Completely closed in the north, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk in the west exchanges waters with the Pacific Ocean through 19 Kuril straits, and further south, through the La Perouse and Tatar Straits, with the Sea of ​​Japan. Its coastline stretches for 10,444 km.

Morse covers the ancient land of Okhotia, and therefore it is shallow in most of its water area. Only in the South Okhotsk Basin does the depth reach 3372 m. If you look at the geomorphological map of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, you can find a number of depressions and uplifts on it: the USSR Academy of Sciences Upland, the TINRO and Deryugin depressions, the Makarov and Peter Schmidt trenches. In the north, the shelf of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is shallow, towards the south the depths gradually increase. The shelf area is 36% of the entire sea area.

The Sea of ​​Okhotsk feeds many large and small rivers, but its main artery is the Amur, great river East Asia. The shores of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula are mostly low-lying, marshy, with relict salt lakes, bays and lagoons. Especially a lot of them on Sakhalin. The western coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is mountainous, with steep, straight banks. The Pribrezhny and Ulinsky ridges and the spurs of the Suntar-Khayat ridge come close to the sea near Ayan, Okhotsk and Magadan.

In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, almost all islands are located near the coast. The largest of them is Sakhalin, whose area is 76,400 km 2. The Kuril archipelago, stretching for 1200 km between the Japanese island of Hokkaido and Cape Lopatka in Kamchatka, has 56 islands (except for small ones of volcanic origin). Volcanologists have identified and taken into account here. 38 active and 70 extinct volcanoes. The Shantar Islands are located in the extreme west of the sea. The most significant of them is Big Shantar. Its area is 1790 km2. Some of these 15 islands have long been inhabited by birds and attract the attention of scientists. To the south of the Patience Peninsula is the small island of Seals, famous for its seal rookery. But the tiny island of Iona, lying 170 miles east of Ayan, is just a lonely rock, visited only by sea birds and sea lions. In addition to these fragments of land, at the very top of the Sakhalin Bay, there are the islands of Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyakov, named after the brave Soviet aces.

The water masses of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, moving mainly counterclockwise, form a cyclonic system of currents. This is due to two main factors - the runoff of river waters and the inflow warm waters Pacific Ocean through the straits of Krusenstern and Bussol. Around the Shantar Islands there is a circular movement in the opposite direction (clockwise), reminiscent of the currents in the bays of Aniz and Patience.

Branches of two powerful water currents enter the south of the sea - the warm current Kuro-Sivo and the cold Oya-Sivo. In addition to these currents, jets of the warm current Soya penetrate into the Sea of ​​Okhotsk through the La Perouse Strait. The influence of warm currents increases in summer and weakens in winter. In addition to the Oya-Sivo Current, which flows into the Sea of ​​Okhotsk through the Kuril Straits, cooling of the waters also causes the alongshore East Sakhalin Current, directed from north to south. Through the southern Kuril straits, cold waters leave for the Pacific Ocean.

The Sea of ​​Okhotsk is known for its powerful tides. In the Penzhina Bay, their height reaches almost 13 m (a kind of record for the USSR), a slightly smaller difference in sea levels at high (tide) and low (low tide) water is observed in the Gizhiginskaya Bay and on the Shantar Islands.

Storms often roam the expanses of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk. The southern region of the sea is especially restless, where strong winds blow from November to March, and wave crests rise to a height of 10-11 m. Another feature of this huge water basin is its business, the largest in the Far East. Only off the western shores of Kamchatka and the Middle Kuril Islands is a strip of clear water preserved in winter. The destruction of the ice cover lasts from April to August - as you can see, our sea is called icy not by chance. The movement of air masses also affects the harsh nature of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The winter anticyclone determines the northwestern direction of the winds, and in summer the southeastern winds prevail, which is typical for the monsoon climate. The amplitude of annual fluctuations in air temperature is 35°C, exceeding that in the Bering and Japan Seas by 10°. The average annual air temperature in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk varies from -7° (in the Gizhigi region) to 5.5° (Abasiri in Hokkaido).

Summer heating of the waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is limited to: the uppermost layers. In August, the surface water temperature reaches 16-18° off the coast of Hokkaido and 12-14° C in the northwest. The lowest summer temperature of surface waters is kept along the Middle Kuriles (6-8°C) and near the Pyagin Peninsula (4-6°C). In February (the coldest month), negative temperatures prevail throughout the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Hydrologists call the layer of "permafrost" a water horizon lying at a depth of between 50 and 100 m. Off the coast of Sakhalin, the temperature of this layer of water is the lowest and reaches -1.6 °. Deeper, about 200 m, the temperature rises again by 1.5-2° above zero. Only in the northern part of the sea and southeast of Sakhalin is this depth characterized by negative temperatures. With further immersion, the temperature slowly rises, reaching 2.4 ° at around 1000 m (due to warmer ocean waters), and then slightly decreases again. At depths of two to three thousand meters, it is 1.9 ° C in winter and summer.

In the area of ​​the Kuril Islands, the salinity of the waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk reaches 33 ppm (slightly more than 30 grams of salts in one liter). Salinity is lower elsewhere; the most desalinated water is in the Sakhalin Bay, where the Amur flows. With depth, the salinity of sea water increases, and below two thousand meters it is quite consistent with ocean water, reaching 34.5 ppm.

The maximum saturation of water with oxygen and the highest concentration of hydrogen ions were recorded at a depth of 10 m, which is associated with the intensive development of phytoplankton. At a depth of 1000-1500 m, a sharp oxygen deficiency was noted - up to 10% saturation. A zone of "biological depression" is formed here. Deeper, the oxygen content increases to 20-25%. Filled through the straits with oceanic waters with a low oxygen content, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk basin contains water masses that mix weakly due to sharp differences in density between individual layers. The vertical circulation of water occurs within the first two hundred meter layer. This is due to the formation at a depth of 50-100 m of a denser and colder intermediate layer of water. Their winter cooling is accompanied by an increase in salinity and density, which leads to the sinking of these masses from the surface.

Differences in water salinity in the Amur Estuary can reach 22 ppm. From the north, salty sea waters enter the estuary, mixing with fresh river waters. With strong southerly winds, a countercurrent sometimes occurs in the Amur, salty water rises up its channel, and the so-called "faunistic barrier" is formed, which animals cannot overcome.

The bottom sediments of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk are represented by sands, pebbles and stony placers with an admixture of silt on the shelf. In closed bays, separated from the sea by sandy spits, pure silts are deposited. Sandy sediments prevail in the Sakhalin Bay, and pebble - in the Penzhina Bay. In the deep basin in the south of the sea, the bottom is covered with sandy silts, and in the central part of it, greenish and brown silts at depths between 1000 and 3000 m determine the spread of the stagnant water zone. Around the island of Iona, at a depth of about 500 m, iron-manganese nodules were found.

The sediments contain many flint shells of the smallest unicellular organisms - diamote algae and radiolarians.

The history of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk goes back hundreds of millions of years. Seaweeds and bacteria that existed over one and a half billion years ago left traces of their life activity on the western coast of the current Sea of ​​Okhotsk. In the Silurian period (about 450 million years ago), the southwestern part of the modern Sea of ​​Okhotsk basin and the region of Sakhalin Island were under water. The same situation persisted in the Devonian (400-350 million years ago) in the region of the Shantar Islands, where even coral reefs developed, or rather reef-like communities with the participation of coral polyps, bryozoans, sea urchins and lilies. However, most of the basin in the Paleozoic rose above sea level. The ancient land of Okhotia located here about 220 million years ago included the central part of the current sea, Sakhalin and Kamchatka. From the north, west and south, Okhotia was washed by a rather deep sea with many islands. Findings of remains of ferns and cycadophytes indicate that subtropical flora grew here, which requires high temperatures and a humid climate.

Another 100 million years passed. In place of Sakhalin and Japanese islands stretched a huge chain of coral reefs, larger than the current Great Barrier Reef off the eastern coast of Australia. The Jurassic reef system probably for the first time marked the position of the future island arc that separated the Sea of ​​Japan from the Pacific Ocean. A major transgression flooded the entire Okhotia and adjacent land areas about 80 million years ago. On the site of Kamchatka, two parallel island ridges were born. As we approached the modern era, they extended more and more into southbound, separating the basins of the Bering and Okhotsk Seas with another arc.

50-60 million years ago, a sharp drop in ocean level led to the complete drying of Okhotia and Beringia. Big connoisseur ancient history In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, Professor G. U. Lindberg convincingly showed that Okhotia was even mountainous in places and large rivers flowed through its territory, starting far to the west - the Paleoamur and Paleoopenzhina. It was they who worked out deep canyons, which later became underwater depressions. Some forms of land relief and traces of ancient coastlines have been preserved at the bottom of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk to this day.

Okhotia went under water about 10 thousand years ago, with the end of the last Quaternary glaciation. Over time, the South Okhotsk Basin was separated from the Pacific Ocean by the youngest island arc Far East- Kuril, - and the outlines of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk were finally determined.

Centuries have passed. The first inhabitants appeared on the Okhotsk coast. The bays and estuaries of the sea abounded with seal rookeries, walruses entered its northern part. The ancient northerners were engaged in sea fishing, collecting edible mollusks and algae.

The significant similarity of the ancient cultures of the Koryaks, Aleuts and the indigenous inhabitants of Kodiak Island near Alaska, noted by the Siberian historian R.V. Vasilevsky, suggests that aborigines took part in the settlement of the New World, at least starting from the Neolithic, and perhaps even earlier. Sea of ​​Okhotsk and Kamchatka. This researcher found Proto-Aleutian features in the structure of Koryak harpoons, the shape of stone fat lamps-lamps and arrowheads, the characteristic type of tools with notched grooves, hooks, spears, awls, spoons and other hunting and household equipment.

In the south of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, there was an island culture, close in a number of ways to the ancient Koryak culture. We note the presence of a swivel harpoon and a significant number of seal and whale bones in the excavations, similar ceramics and stone inventory of the Amur settlements and sites of the ancient inhabitants of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

The Soviet anthropologist M. G. Levin noted that “the anthropological, linguistic and cultural proximity of the Nivkhs of Sakhalin and Amur, reflecting, undoubtedly, the processes of constant communication between them over the past several centuries, at the same time, has its roots in the more distant past. - the Neolithic era ... It is likely that the Ainu legends about tons depict the ancestors of the Gilyaks or tribes related to them, whom the Ainu found on Sakhalin during their resettlement to this island ”(Ethnic Anthropology and Problems of Entogenesis of the Peoples of the Far East, M., 1958, p. 128 - 129).

But who are the Nivkhs, or Gilyaks, as these indigenous inhabitants of the Lower Amur and Sakhalin were recently called? The word "nivkh" means "man". Rites and customs, religious beliefs, myths and legends of the Nivkhs reflect the history of this ancient people of the Amur region and have long been the object of scientific research. Not so long ago, scientists were excited by the report of striking analogies in the language of the Nivkhs and some African tribes, in particular in Western Sudan. It also turned out that the dugout boats and axes of the Nivkhs are similar to the boats and axes of the inhabitants of the islands of Tahiti and the Admiralty.

What do these coincidences say? So far, it is difficult to answer this question. Maybe some thread will be drawn from the sacred chants of the Nivkhs?

The sea was seething. Seals and fish died.
There are no people, no fish.
Then a mountain was born from the sea.
Then the earth was born from the sea.

Does this legend testify that the Kuril Islands were born before the eyes of the Nivkhs? If we admit the possibility of such an interpretation of it, then one should recognize in the Nivkhs one of the most ancient peoples of the Far East. From shamanic chants we learn about warm seas and white mountains, shallows from white sand and abandoned Nivkh wives. Apparently, it is about coral islands the Pacific Ocean, from where the ancestors of the Nivkhs could come to the basin of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk.

Even more mysterious is the story of the Ainu, who suddenly appeared among the natives of Sakhalin. As early as 1565, the monk de Froes reported in the Japanese Letters: “... the Ainu almost, with their European appearance and thick hair covering their heads ... differed sharply from the beardless Mongoloids.” Their militancy, endurance, the custom of women to blacken their lips, nakedness, barely covered by the "belt of shame" so common among the southern islanders of the Pacific - all this was so amazing to travelers that some of them even called the Ainu black people. Vasily Poyarkov's "interrogative speeches" speak of an island lying to the east (i.e., Sakhalin), about the Nivkhs inhabiting its northern part, and "black people, who are called Kuy", living in the south. Local historians discovered the parking lot of Negroins in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky already today.

According to the outstanding Soviet scientist L. Ya. Sternberg, the peculiarities of the culture and anthropology of the Ainu bring them closer to some peoples of South India, Oceania and even Australia. One of the arguments in favor of the theory of the Austronesian origin of the Ainu is the cult of the snake, which is also common among some tribes of Southeast Asia.

When in the II millennium BC. e. Ainu came to southern islands Sea of ​​Okhotsk, they found thin here. According to the legends, they were sea hunters and fishermen.

The conclusion suggests itself that the peoples who once inhabited the southern archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean, India and even Australia rolled into the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk region in waves. Partly mixing with the local population, they adopted its culture and customs. Typical inhabitants of the southern countries, the Ainu borrowed the design of the canoe from the Itelmens of Kamchatka, the type of boat from the Tonchi of Sakhalin, and winter clothes from the Nivkhs. Even in Ainu ornaments, as R. V. Kozyreva writes (Ancient Sakhalin, L., 1967), on ceramics and bone products, there are simple and geometric patterns and incisions characteristic of the early periods of the history of local culture.

Already before the eyes of man, the formation of the modern coastline of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk continued. Even in new and modern times its level did not remain constant. Just 200 years ago, according to the Khabarovsk paleogeographer L. I. Sverlova, Sakhalin was connected with the mouth of the Amur. According to her calculations, based on the establishment of a functional relationship between fluctuations in the level of the World Ocean and changes in the temperature regime of the Earth, the lowest standing of sea waters fell on 1710-1730. Comparing these data with the dates of the voyages of famous sailors, L.I. Sverlova came to the conclusion that J.F. Laieruz in 1787, W.R. Broughton in 1797, and even I.F. could pass through the Tatar Strait, because it did not exist at all: Sakhalin was a peninsula in those years.

In 1849-1855, during the period of the Amur expedition, sea waters had already blocked the bridge between the mainland and Sakhalin, and this allowed G. I. Nevelsky to convey to N. N. Muravyov: “Sakhalin is an island, the entrance to the estuary and the Amur River is possible for seagoing ships from the north and south. The age-old delusion has been positively dispelled, the truth has been revealed” (B.V. Struve. Memories of Siberia 1848-1854, St. Petersburg, 1889, p. 79).

And yet, L. I. Sverlova, apparently, overestimates the real significance of ocean level fluctuations. Without a shadow of a doubt, she writes, for example, that in 1849-1855. this level was 10 m higher than the present level. But where, then, are the marine sediments, terraces, abrasion areas, and many other features that inevitably accompany displacements of coastlines? The only evidence of a higher level of the Far Eastern seas in the post-glacial period is a low terrace 1-3 m high, the remains of which have been found in many places. However, the time of its formation is several thousand years from our days.