Using that definition, I would think that the Mediterranean is an estuary and has no coastline, since the Straights of Gibraltar are too narrow.
I’m still not clear on the distinction between “coastline” and “tidal shoreline.” Don’t all ocean coasts experience at least diurnal tides?
So it’s, what? Part of the Pacific? Or the Indian Ocean, maybe?
Only by torturing definitions can this claim be considered to have any amount of truth. The table suryani linked to claims CT has a freshwater shoreline, which is a frankly laughable claim. Salinity ranges from 23.5 parts per thousand to 35 parts per thousand as you go from west to east. Only at the most restricted waters of the New York end could that be called anything other than clearly saline. The salinity is not far off the range for the waters immediately outside the Sound. In fact,if you applied that standard to the coastlines in general, you’d eliminate a large part of the entire Pacific Coast.
I’d call that not merely pedantic to a fault, but pedantic to the point of idiocy.
I’d like to know how that table gets 89 miles of tidal shoreline for Pennsylvania.
It can’t be on Lake Erie, because then Ohio would be on the chart. Therefore, it has to be the Delaware River, right? But if it was the entire Delaware River, it would be more like 200 miles, from Delaware, winding its way up to New York. Therefore, it has to be part of the Delaware River.
But which part?
My guess would have been that the boundaries of Connecticut and Pennsylvania are drawn in such a manner as to exclude the portion of their shorelines that actually touch the water.
The lower part, which rises and falls with the tides. Further upstream the current of the river overwhelms and stops the tidewater.
According to this Wikipedia article, Connecticut does have a coastline. And the second table includes Great Lakes shores as coastline.
And this Wikipedia article says:
This seems to imply that there is such a thing as a non-pelagic coast that fronts on a gulf or a bay. That would seem to me to include Connecticut’s shoreline.
The part that’s affected by tides. The lower part of the Delaware is affected by tides, and that is the tidal shoreline. Higher up the river is not affected by tides.
By that definition, the tidal shoreline should be shorter than the coastline, because it is only a potion of it. But in every case, the shoreline is longer. I still don’t understand the difference between the two.
Discussions like this are why I LOVE the Dope.
And wouldn’t Hawaii have the same number of miles in both its shoreline and coastline?
The tidal shoreline includes the outer, oceanic coastline, plus the parts of estuaries affected by tides. So the coastline will always be shorter than the tidal shoreline.
Pearl Harbor, for one example, would be tidal shoreline but not coastline.
But I see no way to construct a definition of “coastline” that excludes all of CT’s coast while also including all of Texas’s, Louisiana’s, Mississippi’s, Alabama’s, and most of Florida’s.
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I’m confused by your use of “but.” you didn’t contradict anything I said.
It’s beyond me why anyone would feel the need to specifically exclude Pennsylvania. Who could possibly consider it to have a coast?
Perhaps the fact that Philadelphia has for almost all of American history been a major ocean port might induce someone to think so. Actually it’s a matter of arbitrary definition where the Delaware River becomes Delaware Bay – it’s clearly bay at Lewes and clearly river at Trenton NJ, but at what point between them does it transition? And why there?
Because the Gulf of Mexico is part of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s not a separate body of water.
Not that anyone who lives on the Gulf Coast would ever say they live on the Atlantic Ocean.