User:Island Kayaker/North Sea from German Wiki
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The North Sea is an epeiric sea of the Atlantic Ocean in north-west Europe, with an average depth of 94 metres. This shelf sea is enclosed by land on three sides with a funnel-shaped opening to the north-east Atlantic. A 150-kilometre stretch of the coast is home to 80 million people; the North Sea itself is an important trade route and serves as Europe’s outlet to world markets. The southern North Sea , together with the adjacent English Channel, is the area with the densest sea traffic in the world. Under the sea there are considerable petroleum and gas deposits, which have been exploited on a large scale since the 1970s. Commercial fishing has reduced fish stocks in the last few decades; environmental problems arise owing to the fact that the effluent from Northern Europe flows directly into it or via the adjacent Baltic Sea.