Southwest Pass is a narrow strait in Vermilion Parish in southern Louisiana in the United States. It connects the Gulf of Mexico to its south with Vermilion Bay to its north. [1] It is bounded on the east by Marsh Island (in Iberia Parish) and on the west by the Louisiana mainland in southeastern Vermilion Parish. [2]
A strait is a naturally formed, narrow, typically navigable waterway that connects two larger bodies of water. Most commonly it is a channel of water that lies between two land masses. Some straits are not navigable, for example because they are too shallow, or because of an unnavigable reef or archipelago.
Vermilion Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 57,999. The parish seat is Abbeville. The parish was created in 1844.
Louisiana is a state in the Deep South region of the South Central United States. It is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States. Louisiana is bordered by the state of Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. A large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River. Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties. The state's capital is Baton Rouge, and its largest city is New Orleans.
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Southwest Pass should not be confused with a channel in the Mississippi River Delta at the mouth of the Mississippi River also known as Southwest Pass.
The Mississippi River Delta region is a 3-million-acre (12,000 km2) area of land that stretches from Vermilion Bay on the west, to the Chandeleur Islands in the Gulf of Mexico on the southeastern coast of Louisiana. It is part of the Louisiana coastal plain, one of the largest areas of coastal wetlands in the United States. The Mississippi River Delta is the 7th largest river delta on Earth (USGS) and is an important coastal region for the United States, containing more than 2.7 million acres of coastal wetlands 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2) and 37% of the estuarine marsh in the conterminous U.S. The coastal area is the nation's largest drainage basin and drains about 41% of the contiguous United States into the Gulf of Mexico at an average rate of 470,000 cubic feet per second.
Southwest Pass is one of the channels at the mouth of the Mississippi River. It empties into the Gulf of Mexico at the southwesternmost tip of the Mississippi River Delta. It lies in Plaquemines Parish in southeastern Louisiana in the United States. It has been the main shipping channel in the Mississippi River Delta since 1853.
