What is a Bight?

A bight is a bend, recess, or curvature in a shoreline. Interestingly, despite the fact that a bight visually looks like someone took a bite out of the coastline, it has no etymological connection to the word bite. Rather, it connects to older words meaning bay. A bight is not considered a true bay since it does not have adequate land on three sides, at best only resembling a large open bay.

Bights are typically shallow (relatively speaking). As a feature of significance, bights are generally just a human observation but they can sometimes mark or bound the range of certain species of fish or ecosystems. Some well-known bights on the East Coast of the United States include:

• New York Bight
• Mid Atlantic Bight

Oceanography