Arctic Ocean over the Arctic Ocean (see Polar route). The Arctic Ocean occupies a roughly circular basin and covers an area of about , almost the size of Antarctica. The coastline is long. It is surrounded by the land masses of Eurasia, North America, Greenland, and by several islands. It is generally taken to include Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, White Sea and other tributary bodies of water. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Bering Strait and to the Atlantic Ocean through the
Milky seas effect Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"). In fact, the effect has not been rigorously documented nor thoroughly explained, even in modern times. Between 1915 and 1993, 235 sightings of milky seas were documented, most of which are concentrated in the northwestern Indian Ocean and near Indonesia. The luminescent glow is concentrated on the surface of the ocean and does not mix evenly throughout the water column. In 1985, a research vessel in the Arabian Sea took water samples during milky seas. Their conclusions were that the effect was caused by the bacteria "Vibrio harveyi". Mareel is typically caused by