What ocean is on the east coast?

The ocean on the east coast of the United States is the Atlantic Ocean, the second largest ocean in the world after the Pacific, covering about 41.1 million square miles and separating the Americas from Europe and Africa. The Atlantic borders 14 U.S. states from Maine in the north to Florida in the south: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The Atlantic coastline of the United States measures about 2,069 miles in straight line distance and roughly 28,673 miles in detailed shoreline measurement (including all bays, inlets, and tidal channels).

Major Atlantic features along the U.S. coast include Penobscot Bay and the rocky coast of Maine, Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bay, Long Island and New York Harbor, Delaware Bay and the Chesapeake Bay, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Charleston Harbor in South Carolina, and the Atlantic coast of Florida from Jacksonville south to Miami. The Gulf Stream, a powerful warm ocean current, flows from the Gulf of Mexico north along the U.S. East Coast and across the Atlantic to Western Europe, moderating the climate of the entire region.

The Atlantic has been central to American history. European exploration and colonization brought the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 across the Atlantic. The Atlantic slave trade brought about 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas between the early sixteenth and mid nineteenth centuries, of whom about 388,000 were brought directly to North America (with many more from the Caribbean). The Atlantic was the route of millions of European immigrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with Ellis Island in New York Harbor processing about 12 million arrivals between 1892 and 1954. The Atlantic was the theater of the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II from September 1939 to May 1945, in which Allied convoys fought German U-boats over the supply lines that fed Britain.

Major Atlantic ports include Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, and Miami. The Atlantic fishing fleet historically supported communities from New England to the Carolinas, although fish stocks have been seriously depleted. Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, with hurricanes forming over the warm Atlantic and Caribbean and often striking the East Coast and Gulf Coast. The Atlantic also contains numerous American territories and possessions including Bermuda (British) and the U.S. Virgin Islands. International boundaries divide the Atlantic among many countries, but the United States exercises a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone along its Atlantic coast. The ocean's name comes from the Greek mythological figure Atlas, who held up the sky.