Mexico, Gulf of

The Gulf of Mexico is a body of water that is bordered by the United States on the north and Mexico on the west and south; its eastern boundary is a line drawn from the western tip of the Florida Keys to the northeastern corner of the Yucatán Peninsula. The European discoverer of the Gulf was Sebastián de Ocampo, who sailed around the western end of Cuba in 1508. The earliest maps referred to the Gulf as Seno Mejicano or Golfo de la Nueva España, but it was named Golfo Mexicano on the 1569 Mercator map. The Gulf covers about 590,000 square miles and is bordered by continental shelves that vary between 30 and 90 miles in width. The Campeche Bank on the northern and western coasts of the Yucatán, however, is 150 miles wide at its greatest extent. The Sigsbee Depression, located toward the western side of the basin, forms the deepest point in the Gulf—13,124 feet.

The geologic history of the Gulf of Mexico is related to the breakup of Pangaea, the ancient continent that held all the world's landmasses, between 200 million and 300 million years ago. The Gulf began to form 130 million to 150 million years ago with the separation of North and South America, but its final shape was realized only within the last 30 million years.

The Gulf is dominated by a northward flow of water formed by the part of the South Equatorial (Caribbean) Current that rushes through the Yucatán Channel. This flow divides and curves east and west along the Gulf's north shore. The eastward-flowing waters pass through the Florida Straits to form the Gulf Stream. The waters of the Gulf are quite warm, varying between 73 and 84 F, and this creates the warm, wet maritime tropical air mass that affects the climate of the adjacent mainlands. The warm waters of the Gulf also contribute to the formation or strengthening of hurricanes that cross the Gulf to strike either the United States or the Mexican mainland. The 1995 hurricane season was one of the most active ever recorded. There were twenty-one named storms, and five crossed the northeastern Gulf of Mexico.

One of Mexico's most important resources is petroleum, and production areas on the Gulf continental shelves include the Marine Golden Lane off Tampico and the Akal and Bacab fields on the Campeche Bank, discovered in the mid 1970s. In 2006 oil companies discovered a massive reserve of oil in U.S.-owned Gulf waters that could conceivably boost oil reserves by fifty percent. Veracruz was Mexico's leading port during the colonial period and the nineteenth century, and Gulf ports still account for 75-80 percent of Mexico's maritime foreign commerce.

See alsoFlorida, Spanish West; Petroleum Industry; Yucatán.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jorge Tamayo, Geografía general de México, 2d ed., vol. 2 (1962), pp. 626-644.

Robert S. Weddle, The Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500–1685 (1985).

Additional Bibliography

Barbosa, Fabio. "Petróleo en los hoyos de dona: Una Mirada a lo desconocido. (El petróleo en los hoyos de dona y otras dreas desconocidas del Golfo de México." Translated by David Shields. Siempre 50, no. 2649 (March 2004): 48-50.

Gore, Robert H. The Gulf of Mexico. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1992.

Grafenstein, Johana von, Laura Muñoz Mata, and Antoinette Nelken-Terner. Un mar de encuentros y confrontaciones: El Golfo-Caribe en la historia nacional. México, D.F.: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2006.

Rezak, Richard, Tom J. Bright, and David W. McGrail. Reefs and Banks of the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico: Their Geological, Biological, and Physical Dynamics. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1985.

Skerritt Gardner, David. Colonos franceses y modernización en el Golfo de México. Veracruz, México: Universidad Veracruzana, 1995.

Trujillo Bolio, Mario A. El Golfo de México en la centuria decimonónica: Entornos geográficos, formación portuaria y configuración marítima. México D.F.; CIESAS, 2005.

                                        John J. Winberry