Nordic Seas intermediate water leaves through the Denmark Straight and the Iceland Ridge. The densest overflow waters leave through the Faroe Bank Channel. The water masses that encompass the Nordic Seas are always changing in response to the local variations that occur between atmosphere-ocean fluxes and convection of intermediate to deep water. The Nordic Seas are found between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, both having variable surface water conditions. The Nordic Seas are complex in the variety of water masses it contains: two surface waters, three intermediate waters, and three deep waters. Figure 3 shows the water mass circulations that
Tethys Ocean Western Tethys Ocean, or Paratethys or Alpine Tethys Ocean. The Black, Caspian, and Aral seas are thought to be its crustal remains, though the Black Sea may, in fact, be a remnant of the older Paleo-Tethys Ocean. The Western Tethys was not simply a single open ocean. It covered many small plates, Cretaceous island arcs, and microcontinents. Many small oceanic basins (Valais Ocean, Piemont-Liguria Ocean, Meliata Ocean) were separated from each other by continental terranes on the Alboran, Iberian, and Apulian plates. The high sea level in the Mesozoic flooded most of these continental domains, forming shallow seas. As theories