The Golfe du Lion (Gulf of Lion) is a wide embayment of the Mediterranean coastline of Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence, reaching from the border with Catalonia in the west to Toulon. Satellite image The Mediterranean Sea is a part of the Alanic Ocean almost completely enclosed by land, on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia. ... Capital Montpellier Area 27,376 km² Regional President Georges Frêche (PS) (since 2004) Population  - 2004 estimate  - 1999 census  - Density (Ranked 10th) 2,458,000 2,295,648 90/km² (2004) Arrondissements 14 Cantons 186 Communes 1,545 Départements Aude Gard Hérault Lozère Pyrénées-Orientales... Provence is a former Roman province and is now a region of southeastern France, located on the Mediterranean Sea adjacent to Frances border with Italy. ... Jump to: navigation, search Capital Barcelona Official languages Spanish and Catalan In Val dAran, also Aranese. ... Location within France Coat of Arms of Toulon Toulon (Tolon in Provençal) is a city in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. ...

Rivers that empty into the Golfe du Lion are the Tech, Têt, Aude, Orb, Hérault, Vidourle, and the Rhône. Têt is the largest river in Roussillon, France. ... The Aude River (Latin Atax) is a river of southwestern France. ... The Orb is a 145 km long stream in the Hérault département of Southern France that flows into the Mediterranean Sea, in Valras-Plage. ... The Hérault is a river of southern France. ... Length 800 km Elevation of the source 1753 m Average discharge 1800 m³/s Area watershed 100,200 km² Origin  Rhône glacier Mouth  Mediterranean Sea Basin countries Switzerland, France The River Rhône (French Rhône, Occitan Ròse, Franco-Provençal Roun, standard German Rhone, Valais German Rotten...

The continental shelf is exposed here as a wide coastal plain, and the offshore terrain slopes rapidly to the Mediterranean's abyssal plain. Much of the coastline is in lagoons and salt marsh. Jump to: navigation, search The continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent, which is covered during interglacial periods such as the current epoch by relatively shallow seas (known as shelf seas) and gulfs. ... Abyssal plains are flat or very gently sloping areas of the ocean basin floor where rocks gradually sink into the ground because they have no supporting heat energy below them; the worlds flattest and smoothest regions are caused by this effect. ... This article is about marsh, a type of wetland. ...

This is the area of the famous cold, blustery catabatic wind called the Mistral. A katabatic wind, from the Greek word katabatikos meaning going downhill, is a wind that blows down a topographic incline such as a hill, mountain, or glacier. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mistral is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs mostly in the winter and spring in the Gulf of Lion. ...

Geodynamics

The Golfe du Lion cannot be dismissed as a simple passive continental margin, however. It results from Oligocene-Miocene anti-clockwise rotation of the Corsican-Sardinian Block against the European Craton. This extension rejuvenated a very complex tectonic framework inherited from the Tethyan evolution and the Pyrenean orogeny. The Eocene mountain-building event that built the Pyrenees compressed and thickened the entire crust. Oil geologists predict that there will be considerable oil deposits at the seaward margins of the Golfe. Jump to: navigation, search Plate tectonics (from the Greek word for one who constructs, τεκτων, tekton) is a theory of geology developed to explain the phenomenon of continental drift, and is currently the theory accepted by the vast majority of scientists working in this area. ... The Oligocene epoch is a geologic period of time that extends from about 34 million to 23 million years before the present. ... The Miocene epoch is a period of time that extends from about 23 to 5. ... A craton is an old and stable part of the continental crust that has survived the merging and splitting of continents and supercontinents for at least 500 million years. ... In geology, orogeny is the process of mountain building. ...

Economy

The chief port on the Gulf is Marseille. Toulon is another important port. The fishing industry in the Gulf is based on hake (Merluccius merluccius), being bottom-trawled, long-lined and gill-netted and currently declining from over-fishing. City motto: Actibus immensis urbs fulget Massiliensis. ... The term hake refers to various fish in the families Gadidae (subfamily Phycinae) and Merlucciidae (both subfamilies Merlucciinae and Steindachneriinae). ...

External links

• Marine topography of the Golfe du Lion
• Geodynamics of the Gulf of Lion: Implications for Hydrocarbon Exploration: very brief precis