Talk:Headlands and bays

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This page lists San Francisco Bay (SFB) as being a well-known bay.

However, the entry for San Francisco Bay says that the SFB is an estuary.

Neither this page nor the entry for estuaries mention a relationship between bays and estuaries (is a bay an estuary? Is an estuary a bay?)

I'm a bit confused as to whether SFB formally is a bay or not. According to this entry, a bay should have land on three sides, whereas SFB has land on almost all sides, and would therefore despite its name seem to be an estuary and not a bay, and should therefore maybe not be listed here as a well-known bay.

I think it qualifies as a bay, it's just on a concordant coastline rather than a discordant coastline, so the two headlands are formed by the same band of rock (broken by a narrow mouth) rather than two parallel bands of rock. It also fits the definition of cove (a bay with a narrower mouth than the widest point of the bay). Finally, in many cases the boundary between an estuary and a bay can be ambiguous, and may be that SF bay can be described as both. So, in conclusion, I don't know ;) Joe D (t) 18:04, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of gulf

Gulf redirects here but is not explicitly defined vis-a-vis bay. A-giau 13:16, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Split article?

I gotta say, I'm not sure I see the point of having this as a unified article. I'd rather see a separate article on minor bodies of saline water (bays, gulfs, seas, etc) and another on terra projections (peninsulas, headlands, etc). This just seems confusing to me, having these combined. The statement that where one is found so too is the other is disproven on the map as often as it is proved. Unschool 23:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I mean, go ahead and split 'em, if you want to. AJD 14:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)