Bahía Blanca

Bahía Blanca (Spanish pronunciation: [baˈi.a ˈβlaŋka]; English: White Bay), colloquially referred to by its own local inhabitants as simply Bahía, is a city in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina, centered on the northwestern end of the eponymous Blanca Bay of the Argentine Sea. It is 4th largest city in the province, and the 16th largest in the country by metropolitan population. It is the seat of government of the Bahía Blanca Partido, with 336,574 inhabitants according to the 2022 census [INDEC]. Bahía Blanca is the principal city in the Greater Bahía Blanca metropolitan area.

The city has an important seaport with a depth of 15 m (49 ft), kept constant upstream almost all along the length of the bay, where the Napostá Stream drains.

Bahía Blanca means "White Bay". The name is due to the color of the salt covering the local soil surrounding the shores. The bay (which is an estuary) was seen by Ferdinand Magellan during his first circumnavigation of the world on the order of Charles I of Spain in 1520, looking for a canal connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean along the coasts of South America.