extends inland from the
Atlantic Ocean into its many inlets, including
Manasquan Inlet, looking westward at
sunset from the
jetty at
Manasquan,
New Jersey, U.S. In
marine geography, the term "inlet" usually refers to either the actual
channel between an
enclosed bay and the
open ocean and is often called an "entrance", or a significant recession in the shore of a sea, lake or large river. A certain kind of inlet created by past
glaciation is a
fjord, typically but not always in mountainous coastlines and also in
montane lakes. Multi-arm complexes of large inlets or
fjords may be called
sounds, e.g.,
Puget Sound,
Howe Sound,
Karmsund (
sund is
Scandinavian for "sound"). Some fjord-type inlets are called
canals, e.g.,
Portland Canal,
Lynn Canal,
Hood Canal, and some are channels, e.g.,
Dean Channel and
Douglas Channel. Tidal amplitude, wave intensity, and wave direction are all factors that influence sediment flux in inlets. On low slope sandy coastlines, inlets often separate
barrier islands and can form as the result of
storm events.
Alongshore sediment transport can cause inlets to close if the action of
tidal currents flowing through an inlet do not flush accumulated sediment out of the inlet. ==See also==