The word
sea can, aside from referring to the
World Ocean, also mean a specific, much smaller body of water, such as the
North Sea or the
Red Sea. There is no sharp distinction between a sea in this sense and an ocean, though seas are generally smaller, and are often partly (as
marginal seas) or wholly (as
inland seas) bordered by land. However, the
Sargasso Sea has no coastline and lies within a circular current, the
North Atlantic Gyre. It is a distinctive body of water with brown
Sargassum seaweed and calm blue water, very different from the rest of the Atlantic Ocean. Seas are generally larger than lakes, and contain salt water rather than freshwater, but some geographic entities known as "seas" are enclosed inland bodies of water that are not salty: for instance, the
Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake. The
Law of the Sea states that all of the ocean is "sea".