a strait between the Asian mainland and Sakhalin Island, connecting the Sea of Japan with the Sea of Okhotsk. The strait is 633 km long and has a maximum width of 342 km in the south and 40 km in the north; at its narrowest point—Nevel’skoi Strait—it is only 7.3 km wide. The fairway has a minimum depth of 7.2 m. The northern part of the strait is called the Amur Estuary. Some geographers do not consider the Nevel’skoi Strait and Amur Estuary to be part of the Tatar Strait. The shores of the Tatar Strait are hilly in the south and flat in the north.
The average water temperature in summer is 10°–12°C. In winter the strait is icebound; in the north a solid sheet of ice covers the strait and its shores, and in the south ice floes fill the open water. The semidiurnal and mixed tides found in the south rise to 2.7 m, and the irregular diurnal tides of the Amur Estuary exceed 2 m.
Among the fish caught in the strait are herring, flounder, halibut, and navaga. Maritime shipping routes link the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan with the mouth of the Amur River and the mainland with Sakhalin Island. The main ports on the strait are Sovetskaia Gavan’, Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinskii, Lesogorsk, and Uglegorsk.