The Gulf of Guinea washes Africa from the northwestern part of the Guinean coast, where Cape Palmas is located, and southeast, where Cape Palmeirinhash is located in Angola. Moreover, on the water surface as such, it has no boundaries.
Description
It so happened that on this stretch of the oceans the line of Ecuador intersects with the zero meridian. Thus, from here begins the countdown of all geographical landmarks on our planet.
The territory of the Gulf of Guinea, covering an area of 1533 thousand square kilometers, is divided into two smaller bays, called Biafra and Benin.
Water temperature
Due to the fact that the Gulf of Guinea is located in the bend of the coastline on both sides of the equator, the temperature in its waters does not fall below + 25 ° C, and this, in turn, makes it a truly tropical body of water.
Among other things, several large rivers carry their waters here at once, and the bottom of the bay has underwater canyons and even seamounts. The beautiful sea landscape at its bottom appeared precisely thanks to the work of powerful river flows.
On its territory, the Gulf of Guinea has a large number of islands - both small and rather large, magnificent in appearance: the land of the mainland and islands, washed by the waves of the bay, is beautiful and bizarre. Here you can see capes and bays, the shores are mostly flat, sandy and only in some places rocky.
Like any warm water body, the Gulf of Guinea, the special climatic conditions on its shores and warm currents created excellent conditions for the prosperity of various representatives of the animal and plant world.
More than one hundred and fifty valuable species of trees grow in forests on this earth, for example, Pancake week and coconut palms, iron and breadfruit.
In the water - brown and red algae, sometimes forming rather large clusters, phytoplankton and jellyfish. But their number is very small, if we talk about the animal world of the bay. It is worth noting that its depth reaches 6363 meters, so the representatives of the fauna took almost every point of it, changing the types and forms in accordance with the conditions in which their life activity proceeds.
In the coastal zone there are a large number of mollusks, crabs, shrimps, crustaceans, spiny lobsters, starfish, snakes and worms, as well as tropical fish, including volatile. Representatives of large fish live a little deeper, especially many dolphins, stingrays and sharks, who are attracted by the possibility of hunting for tuna - a welcome delicacy of all predators. Far from this whirlpool, the gulf is visited by giant whales - sperm whales.
For a newcomer, the climate is very unusual. Although the temperature reaches relatively low figures during the day, the humidity is about 80% daily, which, together, creates unbearable stuffiness and fertile soil for the existence of malaria mosquitoes. But the undoubted advantage is that the fertile lands are regularly irrigated, so several centuries ago the first plantations of coffee and cocoa appeared on the Guinean coast, which are still developing.
The living conditions of the local population also leave much to be desired: tap water is unsuitable for drinking because of the high probability of contracting hepatitis A, typhoid fever or yellow fever. Roads are broken and practically have no asphalt pavement, the transport structure is very poorly developed, and air transport is too unreliable to be able to carry out long-distance flights and establish regular passenger traffic.
Place of Birth
In 1984, oil fields were discovered in the water area of the Gulf, and later a whole oil and gas basin was developed, where several states, including energy companies of the Russian Federation, are simultaneously producing oil on an ongoing basis.
The famous bay is depicted on coins.
Probably few remember, but the view of the Gulf of Guinea was also imprinted on metal coins of the Soviet Union of various denominations. More precisely, they minted a whole picture on the back of the coin, which includes the globe with the continents, illuminated by the sun's rays, framed by ears of corn tied with a ribbon, a star at the top and the USSR inscription at the bottom.
Now in catalogs describing rare and valuable coins, as well as in discussions and disputes about the value of any numismatic collection of those times, the Gulf of Guinea on USSR coins has become one of the criteria by which the rarity of an instance is estimated. This takes into account the degree of its severity, the presence or absence of a parallel in this area, the clarity of the contours of the continents, as well as some other factors. There is still debate about whether the Gulf of Guinea should be taken into account when examining coins at all, or does it only more confuse the expert in carrying out such painstaking work.
