Gulf of Lion

The Gulf of Lion (French: Golfe du Lion) is a wide embayment of the Mediterranean coastline of Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence in France, reaching from the border with Catalonia in the west to Toulon.

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.

Rivers that empty into the gulf include the Tech, Têt, Aude, Orb, Hérault, Vidourle, and the Rhône.

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 composed of lagoons and salt marsh.

This is the area of the famous cold, blustery catabatic wind called the Mistral.

Etymology

The name of the Gulf does not come from the animal called the lion, but rather from the town of Lyon, the ancient capital of the Gauls. Lyon is on the Rhone River, which empties into the Gulf of Lion. Lyon was originally called Lugdunum, and was named for Lugh (pronounced "Lu"), the name of an important pan-Celtic god, following the Celtic invasion and settlement in Provence and the south of France in the 4th century B.C. The same god was the source of the name of the French town of Laon. The name evolved gradually during the Middle Ages from Lugdunum to Loudoun to Lion. [Aldo Bastie, Histoire de la Provence, Editions Ouest-France, 2001, gives an account of the Celtic invasion. For the evolution of the name, see the article on the city of Lyon, and the article Golfe du Lion in the French-language Wikipedia.]

Geodynamics

The Gulf of Lion is not a simple passive continental margin; 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 gulf.

References

External links

* [http://www.ifremer.fr/drogm_uk/Realisation/carto/lion/GULFDULIONPERSPECTIVE.htm Marine topography of the Golfe du Lion]
* [http://aapg.confex.com/aapg/barcelona/techprogram/paper_83014.htm Geodynamics of the Gulf of Lion: Implications for Hydrocarbon Exploration] : very brief precis