Red sea

The phrase “Red Sea” is a direct translation of the Greek “ Eritra thalassa ” ( other Greek: Ἐρυθρὰ Θάλασσα ), Latin “ Mare Rubrum ”, Arabic “ El-Bahr El Ahmar ” (البحر الأحمر), Somali “ Badda Cas ” and tiger Kay-Bahri (ቀይሕ ባሕሪ). In modern Hebrew, the sea ​​is also called Red - “ ha-Yam ha-hell ” ( הַיָּם הָאָדוֹם ), but is traditionally identified with what is called in the Bible “ Reed ” ( יַם סוּף ).

There are several versions of the origin of the name of the Red Sea.

The first version explains the origin of the name of this sea from the incorrect reading of the Semitic word, consisting of three letters: "x", "m" and "p". From these letters in the ancient inscriptions the name of the Semitic people, the Himyarites , who lived in South Arabia before its conquest by the Arabs, is composed. In ancient South Arabian writing, brief vowel sounds were not graphically depicted on the letter. Therefore, it was suggested that when the Arabs decoded the South Arabian inscriptions, the combination of “x”, “m” and “p” was read as the Arabic “ahmar” (red).

Another version makes the name of the sea dependent on one or another part of the world . In the mythical legends of many peoples of the world, cardinal points are associated with certain color shades. For example, red symbolizes the south, white symbolizes the east, black (in a number of Asian peoples) symbolizes the north. Hence the name " Black Sea " does not mean "sea with dark, black water", but "sea in the north." After all, the Turks called this sea Kara-Deniz, the ancient tribes who spoke Iranian languages - Ahshayen (dark), and the Scythians called Tama, which is also associated with the meaning of “dark”. As for the Red Sea, the word "red", apparently, indicates its southern location, and not at all the color of sea water.

According to another version, the sea was named after the seasonal blooming of microscopic algae Trichodesmium erythraeum near the surface of the water ^[1] . An excess of the red pigment phycoerythrin in algae causes “blooming” of water in the Red Sea, and the latter instead of blue-green becomes reddish-brown.

One of the first descriptions of the Red Sea was in the II century BC. e. Greek historian and geographer Agatharhid of Cnidus in his work On the Red Sea (Eritrea). In the 16th century, the name Suez was allowed ^{[2] [3] [4] [5]} .

General information

The Red Sea washes the shores of Asia and Africa: Egypt , Sudan , Djibouti , Eritrea , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , Israel and Jordan .

The area of ​​the Red Sea is 450,000 km² , almost 2/3 of the sea lies in the tropical zone .

The volume is 251,000 km³ .

According to various estimates, the length (in the north – south direction) is from 1932 ^[6] to 2350 km, and the width is from 305 to 360 km. The banks are indented weakly, their outlines are mainly predetermined by fault tectonics, and the eastern and western coasts are parallel to each other for almost their entire length.

The following are distinguished in the bottom relief: a coastal bank (to a depth of 200 m), the widest in the southern part of the sea, with numerous coral and indigenous islands; the so-called main trough - a narrow depression occupying most of the bottom of the sea, on average, to a depth of 1000 m; axial trough - a narrow and deep trough , as if cut into the main trough, with a maximum depth, according to various sources, from 2604 to 3040 meters. The average sea depth is 437 m.

There are few islands in the northern part of the sea (for example: Tiran Island) and only south of 17 ° C. w. several groups with numerous islands formed: the Dakhlak archipelago is the largest in the southwestern part of the sea, and the smaller archipelagos Farasan , Suakin , Hanish . There are separate islands - for example, Kamaran .

In the north of the sea there are two bays: Suez and Aqaba , which connects to the Red Sea through the Et-Tiran Strait. A fault passes through the Gulf of Aqaba, so the depth of this gulf reaches large values ​​(up to 1800 meters).

The peculiarity of the Red Sea is that not a single river flows into it, and the rivers usually carry silt and sand with them, significantly reducing the transparency of sea ​​water. Therefore, the water in the Red Sea is crystal clear.

The Red Sea is the salty sea of ​​the World Ocean. In 1 liter of water here contains 41 g of salts (in the open ocean - 34 g, in the Black Sea - 18, in the Baltic - only 5 grams of salts per liter of water). During the year, no more than 100 mm of atmospheric precipitation falls above the sea (and not everywhere and exclusively in the winter months), while 20 times more - 2000 mm evaporates over the same time - more than half a centimeter evaporates from the sea surface every day water). In the complete absence of water from land, this shortage of water in the sea is compensated only by water from the Gulf of Aden. In the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, there are simultaneously currents entering and leaving the Red Sea. For a year, almost 1000 km³ more water is brought into the sea than is removed from it. It takes only 15 years to fully exchange water in the Red Sea.

In 1886, during an expedition to the Russian Vityaz corvette in the Red Sea at a depth of 600 meters, waters with an abnormally high temperature were discovered ^{[7] [8]} . In 1948, the Swedish ship Albatros also discovered similar waters, besides with abnormally high salinity. The presence of hot metal-bearing brines at great depths in the Red Sea was finally established in 1964 by an expedition on the American ship Discovery, when the water temperature from a depth of 2.2 km was 44 ° C and its salinity was 261 grams per liter ^[7] . By 1980, 15 places had been discovered at the bottom of the Red Sea with similar waters, which, together with the adjacent bottom sediments, were highly enriched with metals ^[9] .

Geological structure and bottom topography

From a geological point of view, the Red Sea is located in the rift zone on the border of the African and Arabian lithospheric plates .

The Red Sea is very young. Its formation began about 25 million years ago, when a crack appeared in the earth's crust and an East African rift valley formed . Under the influence of centrifugal force due to the rotation of the Earth, the African plate was separated from the Arabian one , and their rotation with the formation of a “spiral” twisting to the north-east, and a gap formed between them in the earth’s crust , which was gradually filled over the millennia with sea water. Plates move constantly - relatively flat shores of the Red Sea diverge in different directions at a speed of 1 cm per year, or 1 m per century (Kendall F. Haven says that at this rate of expansion over the next 200 million years, the Red Sea will become the width of the Atlantic Ocean ^{[ 10]} ) - but also at different speeds relative to each other: the movement of the African plate was very slow, while the Arabian plate moved much faster and as a result the Somali plate began to move east. The spiral movement of the Arabian Plate led to the closure of part of the vast Tethys Ocean that washed Africa, and subsequently the formation of the Mediterranean Sea . This is confirmed by the fact that rocks and minerals characteristic of the Mediterranean Sea are also found in Red. And the further rotation of the Arabian and Somali plates opened the strait in the south, into which the waters of the Indian Ocean poured, eventually leading to the formation of the Gulf of Aden. The movement of continental plates continued to influence the terrain. In the south, a large segment, breaking away from the Arabian plate, eventually closed the passage that formed between the African and Somali plates. The sea here dried up, and a valley was formed, known as the "triangle of Afar ." This region, which is peculiar in the geological sense, has given scientists a lot of information about the history of the planet and the evolution of mankind . The lowest segment of the “Afar Triangle” is currently slowly sinking under water and will eventually fall back below sea level.

Changes, of course, affected not only this local area of ​​the earth's surface. The shift of the Syrian-African fault to the north led to the formation of the Suez Bay. The Arabian and African plates continued to move at different speeds (this difference in speeds was due to the different distance of the plates from the axis of rotation ). The inevitable friction between the plates formed another valley, very similar to the bed of the Red Sea. This fault begins from the Et-Tiran Strait and goes further north to the Gulf of Aqaba, as well as the valleys in which the Dead Sea and Arava lie. The endpoint of these valleys is Syria . Continuous tectonic activity shifted the Suez Bay to the north - towards the Mediterranean Sea. Human intervention completed this process in 1869 when the Suez Canal was opened. The waters of the Mediterranean Sea flowed into the Red Sea, and the migration of underwater flora and fauna in both directions began.

Hydrological regime

The Red Sea is the only body of water on Earth that does not run into any river.

Strong evaporation of warm water turned the Red Sea into one of the most saline on the globe: 38-42 grams of salts per liter.

Between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean there is an intensive water exchange. In winter, the Southwest Monsoon Current is established in the Indian Ocean, starting in the Bay of Bengal, turning into the Western Current, which branches, and one branch goes north to the Red Sea. In the summer, the monsoon current, starting off the coast of Africa, in the Gulf of Aden, joins the current from the Red Sea. In addition, in the Indian Ocean there are deep water masses formed by dense waters flowing from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman. Below 3.5-4 thousand meters, bottom water masses are formed, formed from the Antarctic supercooled and dense salty waters of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. ^[11] .

Climate

The climate on the coast of almost the entire Red Sea is tropical desert, and only the extreme north refers to the Mediterranean climate . The air temperature in the coldest period (December – January) during the day is + 20–25 ° C, and in the hottest month –August, exceeds + 35–40 ° C and even sometimes reaches +50 ° C. Due to the hot climate off the coast of Egypt, the water temperature does not fall below +20 ° C even in winter, and reaches +27 ° C in summer.

Bioresources

In terms of quality and variety of corals, marine life and fauna, the Red Sea has no equal in the Northern Hemisphere. The tourist boom that has swept in recent years ^{[ when? ] The} Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, is largely associated with the unique and incredibly rich underwater world of this tropical sea, the popularization of scuba diving.

Stretched along the entire Egyptian coast, coral reefs are a kind of life center, attracting many fish. The variety of coral shapes is striking, which can be round, flat, branched, as well as have other fantastic shapes and colors - from pale yellow and pink to brown and blue. But only live corals preserve color, after death they lose soft integumentary tissues and only a white calcium skeleton remains.

Bottlenose dolphins , various species of striped dolphins and killer whales are widespread in the Red Sea. It is quite possible to meet under water and with a green turtle . On the seabed live echinoderms - sea ​​cucumbers . There are sharks , they have chosen for themselves the coast of Sudan. Moray eels adapted to life on reefs can reach 3 meters in length and have a rather frightening appearance. Usually, if they are not teased, they are not dangerous for humans, but a fish bite can be dangerous: there are cases of unprovoked attacks on divers - scuba divers ^{[12] [13]} . Here you can also meet the Napoleon fish , named so because of the characteristic protrusion on the head, which resembles the headdress of the French emperor . These fish are especially numerous at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The angelfish and butterfly fish, clown fish and sultanas are distinguished by bright colors.

Cities

Seaside cities:

Tourism

Energy Resources

• Fauna of the red sea

• Bukharin M. D. Origin of the concept of “Red Sea” // Bulletin of Ancient History, 2009, No. 3, pp. 46–63.

• History of the Red Sea (English) (inaccessible link) . Archived February 25, 2009.