Hudson Strait in the context of "Martin Frobisher"

Hudson Bay, sometimes called Hudson's Bay (usually historically), is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada with a surface area of 1,230,000 km (470,000 sq mi). It is located north of Ontario, west of Quebec, northeast of Manitoba, and southeast of Nunavut, but politically entirely part of Nunavut. It is an inland marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. The Hudson Strait provides a connection to the Labrador Sea and the Atlantic Ocean in the northeast, while the Foxe Channel connects Hudson Bay with the Arctic Ocean in the north. The Hudson Bay drainage basin drains a very large area, about 3,861,400 km (1,490,900 sq mi), that includes parts of southeastern Nunavut, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, all of Manitoba, and parts of the U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. Hudson Bay's southern arm is called James Bay.

The Eastern Cree name for Hudson and James Bay is Wînipekw (southern dialect) or Wînipâkw (northern dialect), meaning muddy or brackish water. Lake Winnipeg is similarly named by the local Cree, as is the location for the city of Winnipeg.

Eastern Canada (French: Est du Canada, also known as the Eastern provinces, Canadian East or the East) is generally considered to be the region of Canada south of Hudson Bay/Hudson Strait and east of Manitoba, consisting of the following provinces (from east to west): Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario.

Eastern Canada overlaps into other geographic regions; Ontario and Quebec, Canada's two largest provinces, define Central Canada, while the other provinces in Eastern Canada constitute Atlantic Canada. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are also known as the Maritime provinces.

Foxe Channel (65°N 80°W / 65°N 80°W / 65; -80 (Foxe Channel)), formerly Fox Channel is an area of sea in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It separates the Foxe Basin (to the north) from Hudson Bay and the Hudson Strait (to the south). To the west and south-west is Southampton Island, to the east is Baffin Island, and to the north-west is the Melville Peninsula.

The channel takes its name from the English explorer Luke Foxe who reached it in 1631.

The Labrador Peninsula, also called Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, is a large peninsula in eastern Canada. It is bounded by Hudson Bay to the west, the Hudson Strait to the north, the Labrador Sea to the east, Strait of Belle Isle and the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the southeast. The peninsula includes the region of Labrador, which is part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the regions of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Côte-Nord, and Nord-du-Québec, which are in the province of Quebec. It has an area of 1,400,000 km (541,000 sq mi).

The Northwest Atlantic Mid-Ocean Channel (NAMOC) is the main body of a turbidity current system of channels and canyons running on the sea bottom from the Hudson Strait, through the Labrador Sea, and ending at the Sohm Abyssal Plain in the Atlantic Ocean. Contrary to most other such systems which fan away from the main channel, numerous tributaries run into the NAMOC and end there. The density of those tributaries is the highest near the Labrador Peninsula, but the longest tributary, called Imarssuak Mid-Ocean Channel (IMOC), originates in the Atlantic Ocean.

Most topography data on the NAMOC originate from wide-range sonar scans. With a total length of about 3,800 km (2,361 mi), NAMOC is one of the longest underwater channels in the world. It is 100–200 m deep and 2–5 km wide at the channel floor. The rising levees of the NAMOC (about 100 m above the sea bed) often hinder confluence of some tributaries, which instead run along NAMOC for hundreds of km. Its western (right-hand, max. height 250 m) levee rises some 100 m above the eastern one (max. height 150 m). This asymmetry is attributed to the Coriolis effect affecting the turbidity currents, which reach velocities of 6–8.5 m/s and deposit silt and clay over the channel. The levee is absent in some parts of the NAMOC, for example between 56°N and 57°N, due to the local side-flows of sand.

Luke Foxe (or Fox) (20 October 1586 – c. 15 July 1635) was an English explorer, born in Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, who searched for the Northwest Passage across North America. In 1631, he sailed much of the western Hudson Bay before concluding no such passage was possible. Foxe Basin, Foxe Channel and Foxe Peninsula were named after him.

He left the Thames in May 1631 in the Charles, took 20 days to work through Hudson Strait, reaching the Bay on 11 July. Blocked by ice to the northward, he went south of Southampton Island to Roes Welcome Sound and south along the west shore to Port Nelson, Manitoba where he found Thomas Button's winter camp of 18 years before, turned north-east, met Thomas James on 29 August, went north into Foxe Channel and into the lower part of Foxe Basin, turned back at 66°47'N, passed Hudson Strait in 10 days and reached England in October without any deaths among his crew.

A Heinrich event is a natural phenomenon in which large groups of icebergs break off from the Laurentide ice sheet and traverse the Hudson Strait into the North Atlantic. First described by the marine geologist Hartmut Heinrich, they occurred during five of the last seven glacial periods over the past 640,000 years. Heinrich events are particularly well documented for the Wisconsin glaciation, during the Last Glacial Period, but notably absent from the Penultimate Glacial Period. The icebergs contained rock mass that had been eroded by the glaciers, and as they melted, the material was dropped to the sea floor as ice rafted debris and formed deposits called Heinrich layers.

The icebergs' melting caused vast quantities of fresh water to be added to the North Atlantic. Such inputs of cold and fresh water may well have altered the density-driven, thermohaline circulation patterns of the ocean, and often coincide with indications of global climate fluctuations.