Overview
Dominica, island country of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It lies between the French islands of Guadeloupe and Marie-Galante to the north and Martinique to the south.
Description
This sea covers an area of approximately 2,754,000 km2 (1,063,000 square miles). The deepest site in this sea is the Cayman Trench between Cuba and Jamaica at 7500 m below the surface, although average depth is 2200 m (Spalding et al. 2001).
The complete area of the Caribbean Sea, including its numerous islands, is known as the Wider Caribbean.
The Wider Caribbean Region includes 35 states and territories that border two interconnected watersheds: the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It includes continental countries, insular nations and dependent territories. On the eastern side of the region's perimeter is the Insular Caribbean: islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the chain of islands in the Bahamas to the north.
The states of the United States around the Gulf of Mexico, the littoral zone of Mexico, Central America the northern states of South America complete the terrestrial perimeter that delimits the two main watersheds of the region. In other words, the Wider Caribbean includes the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and adjacent zones of the Atlantic Ocean south of the 30° northern latitude and within the 200 nautical miles of the Atlantic coasts of the states.
The boundary nations of the Caribbean Sea are Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, United States, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and the overseas territories of France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.