inlet

thumb|300px|Bay at the Gulf of Salerno, Italy An inlet is a typically long and narrow indentation of a shoreline such as a small arm, cove, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea.

==Overview== thumb|300px|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.]] 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.