Baltic Sea Gulf of Riga, and the Bay of Gdańsk. The Baltic Proper is bordered on its northern edge, at the latitude 60°N, by the Åland islands and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula. The Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal. Administration The Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the
Geology of the Baltic Sea years of existence connected to the White Sea through Karelia due to the isostatic depression caused by the ice sheet of the earlier Saalian ice age. Little is known about the Baltic Sea during the oscillations of the Weichselian ice age, the last glaciation. The first Weichselian glaciations, corresponding to MIS 5b and 5d, penetrated parts of the Baltic Sea depression from north to south but did not got south beyond the Åland Islands. The Weichsel ice sheet reached northern Denmark about 65–60 thousand years ago. When the last ice sheet began to retreat north from the Baltic Sea depression