International Sea Seeing
Some people plan a trip around a city. Others plan it around a body of water: the reef they want to dive, the channel they want to sail, the coast they have read about since they were a kid. This is a guide for the second kind of traveler. Below are eight countries whose seas are worth crossing an ocean to see, what makes each stretch of water distinct, and the wood charts that put those depths on your wall long after you come home.
Cuba and the Caribbean
Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, sitting right where the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic all meet. It is famous for cigars and rum made from its own sugar cane, and it remains one of the least commercialized islands in the region, which is exactly why it rewards the effort of getting there.
The Caribbean Sea itself covers more than a million square miles and holds the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the largest barrier reef in the world. Its warm water runs south of Cuba and north of South America, ringed by boundary nations from Belize and Costa Rica to the Bahamas, Barbados, and Dominica. Just to the south sits Jamaica, an island smaller than Connecticut but stacked with mountains, and Grand Cayman, a diving capital that draws people from all over the world for the walls just offshore. Farther north, the Gulf of Mexico formed more than 300 million years ago, mostly shallow water over a basin floor that drops past 14,000 feet at its deepest point. That kind of contrast, a shallow shelf falling away to a deep trough, is what a layered wood chart shows better than any flat map can.
Ireland and the Irish Sea
In the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants sometimes spent twelve weeks at sea to reach the United States. A cruise to the Emerald Isle now takes about five days, which is a good reminder of how much the crossing has changed. The Irish Sea separates Ireland from the British mainland and does a lot of quiet work: it is a shipping route, a reliable fishery, and a source of wind power from the offshore farms scattered across it.
It is also the best habitat anywhere for the basking shark, the second-largest fish in the world. From April into early August you can watch these gentle giants from a boat or even from shore, and they put on a show worth waiting for. To the south, the Celtic Sea blurs into the open Atlantic off Ireland's coast, and the Celtic Shelf along the seabed is one of those boundaries you only really understand once you see it drawn in relief. If a clock suits the room better than a chart, the Ireland wall clock carries the same coastline.
Italy and its four seas
Italy's boot plants its heel in the middle of four distinct seas, and each one has its own character. The Adriatic, the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean, is warm and calm, with clear water over smooth pebbles that swimmers and divers love. The Tyrrhenian is the underrated one, historically prized for its trade routes but just as worth visiting for its beaches. The Ligurian Sea runs between the Italian Riviera and Corsica, and along its shore sit the five hillside villages of the Cinque Terre, all cliff-edge cafes and long views over the water.
Tying them together is the Mediterranean itself, which touches twenty-two countries, carries nearly 29,000 miles of coastline, and separates Europe from Africa before opening to the Atlantic at the Strait of Gibraltar. Seeing all four Italian seas on a single chart makes the geography click in a way a textbook never manages.
Japan, a country never far from the water
Japan is an archipelago of thousands of islands with more than 18,000 miles of shoreline, and no matter where you stand in the country you are never more than about ninety-three miles from the sea. The Pacific side carries the shipping lanes that move Japan's exports to and from Australia and New Zealand. To the north, the Sea of Okhotsk is dotted with islands, many uninhabited and given over to breeding seals, sea lions, and seabirds.
The Sea of Japan, walled off from the Pacific by the archipelago, has almost no tides and low salinity, and it is one of the most productive fishing grounds in the region. It also hides some genuine oddities, including the giant squid and the rarely seen Japanese roughshark, of which only a handful have ever been observed. A wood chart reveals the shape of that seafloor, the open depths where all that life moves unseen.
The Korean Peninsula and its three seas
The Korean Peninsula is surrounded by water on three sides. Koreans call these the East Sea, West Sea, and South Sea, though they are better known internationally as the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, and the East China Sea. The Yellow Sea sits over one of the world's largest submerged continental shelves, which makes for tremendous fishing and draws huge numbers of migratory birds. Its color is not a metaphor: rivers pour mineral-rich soil into it, tinting the water. The East China Sea, roughly 480,000 square miles, is heavily fished by China, Japan, and both Koreas, and doubles as a major trade route into the North Pacific.
New Zealand and the Tasman Sea
New Zealand sits in the Pacific about 1,200 miles off the southeast coast of Australia, which looks close on a globe and turns into a five-hour flight in practice. The water between the two countries is the Tasman Sea, named for the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the first European to reach both New Zealand and Tasmania. New Zealand thinks of itself, rightly, as an island nation, home to more than four million people, dramatic terrain, and a great many sheep. The bathymetry around its two main islands is spectacular, and it makes for one of the most striking charts we produce.
Scandinavia and the northern seas
Scandinavia, the common name for the Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, packs an enormous variety of water into one region. The Scandinavian Peninsula runs about 1,150 miles and reaches up into the Barents Sea, a shallow shelf around 750 feet deep that stays ice-free even in September, kept open by warm Atlantic water despite sitting near the Arctic.
The Norwegian Sea has drawn skilled fishers for centuries, its blue whiting, haddock, and cod a real part of the economy. The North Sea does a bit of everything, from fishing and shipping to tourism and, more recently, wind and early wave power. And the Baltic Sea is the largest expanse of brackish water on Earth, more than 146,000 square miles that gather up the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Riga, the Bay of Gdansk, and the Gulf of Finland. On a chart, these seas blend one into the next while each keeps its own shape, which is exactly the point of drawing them in wood.
The United Kingdom, ringed by water
The seabed around the United Kingdom belongs to the Crown Estate out to twelve miles from shore, so the monarch really does own both the land and the sea. The English Channel, the stretch of Atlantic separating southern England from northern France, is the busiest shipping lane in the world, narrowing to the Strait of Dover where it meets the southern North Sea. On a clear day you can see the white Cliffs of Dover from the French coast. The Irish Sea closes the loop, dividing the British mainland from Ireland, and from the peak of Snaefell on the Isle of Man you can see England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all at once, a fitting view from an island that is not technically part of the UK at all. The United Kingdom wall clock keeps that whole coastline on the wall and the time on the table.
Bring the water home
Whichever sea you choose to see first, the trip tends to create an appetite for the next one. Each of these basins shaped the life and history of the coasts around it, and the depths and shallows that made them are exactly what a nautical wood chart puts back into view. Every layer of birch is a real depth contour, stacked to build the true shape of the seabed you sailed over.
Browse the full International collection to find the water you crossed, or the one you are already planning to. If a chart is bound for a mantel with a clock, the wall clocks carry the same coastlines. Wherever you start, do not stop. There are always more seas to see.