Baffin Bay Baffin Bay Baffin Bay (Inuktitut: "Saknirutiak Imanga"; ; ), located between Baffin Island and the southwest coast of Greenland, is a marginal sea of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is connected to the Atlantic via Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea. The narrower Nares Strait connects Baffin Bay with the Arctic Ocean. The bay is not navigable most of the year because of the ice cover and high density of floating ice and icebergs in the open areas. However, a polynya of about , known as the North Water, opens in summer on the north near Smith Sound. Most of
Shelikof Strait variances of up to 40 feet (12 meters). The strait is named after Grigory Shelikhov (1747–1795), also spelled "Shelikof", the Russian fur trader who founded the first Russian settlement in what is now Alaska at Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island in 1784. The United States Navy seaplane tender USS "Shelikof", in commission from 1944 to 1947 and from 1952 to 1954, was named for Shelikof Strait. Shelikof Strait Shelikof Strait () is a strait on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Alaska between the Alaska mainland to the west and Kodiak and Afognak islands to the east.