Why does the IHO consider Hudson Bay part of the Arctic Ocean? I was under the impression that Hudson Bay’s major outlet was the Hudson Strait, which in turn feeds into the Atlantic Ocean.
When calculating watersheds and drainage basins, I always understood it was done by figuring out which ocean the water from a particular river ends up in, and though most water from the Saskatchewan river system (that doesn’t evaporate) eventually ends up in the Atlantic Ocean, for some reason it’s considered part of the Arctic Ocean drainage basin.
Because they had to draw the line between the “Atlantic Ocean” and the “Arctic Ocean” somewhere, and the IHO drew it between Baffin Island and the tip of Labrador that opposes it.
My The Times Atlas of the World does not explicitly name or set off the parts of the Arctic Ocean with lines, but the plate labeled “Arctic Ocean” is drawn to include all of Davis Strait and Hudson Strait and most of Hudson Bay.
So the waters of the Mighty Wascana, flowing leisurely 100 m from my house, drain into the Arctic Ocean! Somehow that seems much cooler than just draining into the Atlantic. A tad more exclusive, or summat.
Kidding aside, most Arctic Ocean water feeds the Atlantic. That ocean is primarily fed by Asian and North American rivers although there is a subsurface current from the Atlantic that wanders into the Arctic (I think around Spitzbergen). However, the polar ice provides a shield that seriously reduces evaporation (the typical method of oceans getting rid of water) and the “excess” does tend to flow down along Greenland and into the Atlantic.
