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The English Channel (French La Manche, "the sleeve") is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from northern France and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about 562&_160;km (350&_160;miles) long and varies in width from 240&_160;km (150&_160;miles) at its widest to only 34&_160;km (21&_160;miles) in the Strait of Dover.^[1] It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some 75,000&_160;square kilometres (29,000 mi²).^[2]

Several major islands are situated in the Channel, the most notable being the Isle of Wight off the English coast and the British crown dependencies the Channel Islands off the coast of France. The Isles of Scilly off the far southwest coast of England are not generally counted as being in the Channel. The coastline, particularly on the French shore, is deeply indented. The Cotentin Peninsula in France juts out into the Channel, and the Isle of Wight creates a small parallel channel known as the Solent.

The Channel is of geologically recent origins, having been dry land for most of the Pleistocene period. It is thought to have been created between 450,000 and 180,000&_160;years ago by two catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods caused by the breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline, a ridge which held back a large proglacial lake in the Doggerland region, now submerged under the North Sea. The flood would have lasted several months, releasing as much as one million cubic metres of water per second. The cause of the breach is not known but may have been caused by an earthquake or simply the build-up of water pressure in the lake. As well as destroying the isthmus that connected Britain to continental Europe, the flood carved a large bedrock-floored valley down the length of the English Channel, leaving behind streamlined islands and longitudinal erosional grooves characteristic of catastrophic megaflood events.^[5]

The Celtic Sea forms its western border.

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