Inlet

An inlet is a (usually long and narrow) indentation of a shoreline, such as a small arm, cove, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh,[1] that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea.

In marine geography, the term "inlet" usually refers to either the actual channel between an enclosed bay and the open ocean and is often called an "entrance", or a significant recession in the shore of a sea, lake or large river.

A certain kind of inlet created by past glaciation is a fjord, typically but not always in mountainous coastlines and also in montane lakes.

Tidal amplitude, wave intensity, and wave direction are all factors that influence sediment flux in inlets.

[2] On low slope sandy coastlines, inlets often separate barrier islands and can form as the result of storm events.

Bay at the Gulf of Salerno , Italy
The Jersey Shore extends inland from the Atlantic Ocean into its many inlets, including Manasquan Inlet , looking westward at sunset from the jetty at Manasquan , New Jersey , U.S.