San Juan Bay
| San Juan Bay Bahía de San Juan |
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Mercator projection of San Juan Bay
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| Location | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| Coordinates | Coordinates: 18°27′7.95″N 66°6′51.04″W / 18.4522083°N 66.1141778°W |
| Type | Bay |
| Ocean/sea sources | North Atlantic Ocean |
| Managing agency | Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, Puerto Rico Ports Authority |
San Juan Bay (Spanish: Bahía de San Juan) is the inlet adjacent to Old San Juan in northeastern Puerto Rico. It is the largest body of water in an estuary of about 150 square miles (390 km2) of channels, inlets and eight interconnected lagoons. Puerto Rico's deepest bay contains the island's busiest harbor, and since 1508 it has been historically significant.
The bay is a semi-enclosed body of water with an elaborate system of loops, basins and channels at the center of Puerto Rico's most significant historical monuments and largest communities. San Juan Bay provides recreation, sightseeing and tourist attractions, and its curved shape offers a variety of docking facilities for watercraft. Because of commercial expansion and environmental stress on the region, the has been the focus of restoration ecology projects. In 2015, the San Juan Estuary Program () began using green flags to mark the condition of the bay's waters.
On a map, San Juan Bay appears to connect two adjacent lakes. This impression comes from a neck of land, Puntilla ("small point"), which projects from the Islet of San Juan Bautista into the center of the bay and approaches another protuberance (Punta Cataño) stretching from the other side of a larger island. The illusion demonstrates the bay's irregular shape. Next to Puntilla are docks which are reportedly the busiest in the Caribbean. Part of the Port of San Juan, they are on the Islet of San Juan Bautista at the entrance to San António Channel. Three bridges between the islet and the mainland cross the channel, which connects the bay to Laguna del Condado (Condado Lagoon) and the Atlantic Ocean. One of these bridges is the historic . Before their construction, the Condado Lagoon was the bay's narrowest entrance.
On the other side, across the Isla Grande peninsula, the bay's interior is shaped like a triangle. It contains the busy Bahía de Puerto Nuevo (New Port Bay), which is closer to inland transportation networks than the Port of San Juan. The bay is fed by the Río Piedras, which empties into the bay via the . The 3.75-mile (6.04 km) channel connects the bay to other lagoons and the city of Río Piedras.
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Wikipedia