60 Fun Facts About Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea lies between which three continents?

The Mediterranean lies between Europe, Asia and Africa: Southern Europe to the north, the Levant and Anatolia (in Asia) to the east, and North Africa to the south.

How wide is the Strait of Gibraltar at its narrowest, where it separates Spain from Morocco?

At its narrowest the Strait of Gibraltar is about 14 km wide, between Point Marroquí in Spain and Point Cires in Morocco; it is the Mediterranean's only natural link to the Atlantic.

Which strait runs through Istanbul and opens into the Black Sea?

The Dardanelles lead into the Sea of Marmara first; the Bosporus then cuts through Istanbul into the Black Sea.

Roughly what share of the global ocean surface does the Mediterranean cover?

The Mediterranean covers about 0.7% of the global ocean surface, a tiny fraction of the roughly 361 million square kilometres of ocean on Earth.

What does 'Mediterranean' literally mean in Latin?

Mediterraneus means 'in the middle of land', or inland, from medius (middle) and terra (land); it is a calque of the Greek mesogeios.

What Latin name did the Romans give the sea once the Empire controlled all its shores?

It means 'Our Sea'; earlier Romans had called it Mare Magnum (Great Sea) or Mare Internum (Internal Sea).

In Turkish the Mediterranean is Akdeniz, meaning what?

Akdeniz means 'White Sea', from ak (white) and deniz (sea); in Turkic colour symbolism white stood for the west and black for the north, hence Karadeniz for the Black Sea.

The Old English name for the Mediterranean, Wendel-sæ, referred to which people?

The Vandals had occupied the North African coast during the Migration Period.

Which state is the only one ever to have controlled the entire Mediterranean coastline?

Only the Roman Empire ever ruled every Mediterranean shore; for roughly four centuries after Augustus the sea was effectively a Roman lake.

Which two civilisations were the earliest advanced societies trading across the Mediterranean?

Egyptians and Minoans traded by sea in the Bronze Age: Minoan Crete shipped pottery and textiles to Egypt, and Theban tomb paintings show Keftiu (Cretan) envoys bearing Minoan-style vessels.

Which Persian king built a canal linking the Red Sea to the Nile, and so to the Mediterranean?

Darius I completed the canal in the late sixth century BC and recorded it on stelae; Herodotus says it was wide enough for two triremes to be rowed abreast and took four days to traverse.

What are the two largest Mediterranean islands, by both area and population?

Sicily and Sardinia are the two largest, at roughly 25,700 km² and 24,000 km²; Sicily has about five million residents and Sardinia about 1.6 million, ahead of every other island.

What is the longest river that empties into the Mediterranean?

Its basin makes up about two-thirds of the sea's drainage area, though the Rhône and Po discharge similar volumes because Europe is so much wetter.

Which two island countries lie within the Mediterranean?

Cyprus and Malta are the only two sovereign island states in the Mediterranean; both joined the European Union on the same day, 1 May 2004.

Where is the deepest recorded point in the Mediterranean, the Calypso Deep?

The Calypso Deep lies in the Ionian Sea, in the Hellenic Trench some 60 km south-west of Pylos in Greece, at a depth of more than 5,100 metres.

Roughly how long is the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to the Gulf of Alexandretta?

The Mediterranean stretches about 4,000 km from the Strait of Gibraltar east to the Gulf of Alexandretta, today's Gulf of İskenderun in Turkey; its coastline totals some 46,000 km.

Which event saw the Mediterranean, cut off from the Atlantic, dry out 5.9 million years ago?

The Messinian salinity crisis left salt layers over 3 km thick in places, totalling roughly a million cubic kilometres, as the sea evaporated after losing its Atlantic connection.

The Zanclean flood that last refilled the Mediterranean is estimated to have taken roughly how long?

Models of the Zanclean flood suggest the basin refilled in less than two years, perhaps only months, as water surged through the breached Gibraltar gateway at about a thousand times the Amazon's flow.

Without the inflow of Atlantic water, the Mediterranean's level would fall by roughly how much each year?

The sea's net water loss is about 1 metre a year, a deficit made up by Atlantic inflow through Gibraltar; the shortfall is greatest in the eastern basin, where salinity is highest.

What kind of water exchange takes place through the Strait of Gibraltar?

Gibraltar has a two-layer flow: less salty Atlantic water enters at the surface while denser, saltier Mediterranean water flows out beneath it toward the Atlantic.

The residence time of water in the Mediterranean is roughly how long?

Water in the Mediterranean is renewed through Gibraltar on a timescale of roughly 100 years, a short turnover that makes the sea a sensitive recorder of climate change.

Which cold winter winds trigger deep-water formation in the Mediterranean?

Bora and Mistral, cold dry winter winds over the Adriatic and the Gulf of Lion respectively, chill and evaporate surface water until it becomes dense enough to sink.

In nutrient and chlorophyll terms, oceanographers class the Mediterranean as which kind of area?

The Mediterranean is an LNLC (low-nutrient, low-chlorophyll) area, effectively a marine desert; its eastern basin is so starved of nutrients that it is called ultraoligotrophic.

A shallow ridge between Sicily and which country divides the Mediterranean into two basins?

A shallow submarine ridge across the Strait of Sicily, between Sicily and Tunisia, separates the Western Mediterranean (about 850,000 km²) from the larger Eastern basin (about 1.65 million km²).

Marsili, one of the largest volcanoes in Europe, lies under which sea about 175 km south of Naples?

Marsili rises from the floor of the Tyrrhenian Sea, about 3,000 m tall and some 70 km long by 30 km wide, which makes it one of Europe's largest volcanoes.

Which sea lies between Corsica and the Italian coast around Genoa?

The Ligurian Sea washes the coast of Liguria around Genoa and reaches south to Corsica; Elba and the Tuscan Archipelago mark its south-eastern edge.

The Malta Escarpment, an undersea cliff south of Sicily, is home to more than how many submarine canyons?

The 250 km escarpment's cliffs reach 3.5 km high in places, and the canyons were not carved by rivers.

The 1571 Battle of Lepanto was the last great naval battle fought mainly between which type of vessel?

Lepanto was fought almost entirely by oar-driven galleys; the Holy League fleet organised by Pope Pius V destroyed most of the Ottoman galleys in the Gulf of Patras.

Which Ottoman admiral won the Battle of Preveza in 1538?

Hayreddin Barbarossa, the Ottoman kapudan pasha, defeated Andrea Doria's Holy League fleet at Preveza in 1538, securing Ottoman naval dominance in the eastern Mediterranean for decades.

Per Robert Davis, Barbary pirates enslaved about a million Europeans across which centuries?

Historian Robert Davis estimated that Barbary corsairs from Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli enslaved about a million Europeans from the 16th to 19th centuries, raiding shipping and coastal towns as far away as Iceland.

The Battle of the Nile in 1798 was fought in which bay?

Nelson found and destroyed Brueys's French fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay, east of Alexandria, on 1 August 1798, stranding Napoleon's army in Egypt.

The Suez Canal has no ship locks for what reason?

The water levels are essentially the same at Port Said and Suez, so the canal needs no locks; seawater flows freely along its length, unlike the lock-stepped Panama Canal.

Species that invade the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal are known by what name?

They are called Lessepsian migrants after Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez Canal; hundreds of Red Sea species, such as rabbitfish and lionfish, have spread into the eastern Mediterranean this way.

Which of these Mediterranean crops was introduced to Spain and Sicily during Arab rule?

Oranges reached Spain and Sicily under Arab rule, along with sugarcane, rice, cotton, lemons, apricots, spinach, eggplants and saffron; wheat, olives and grapes had been Mediterranean staples for millennia.

The Spanish words aceite and aceituna come from the Arabic al-zait, meaning what?

Al-zait means 'olive juice', the Arabic term for olive oil; aceite is Spanish for oil and aceituna for the olive itself, both borrowed during Moorish rule.

Which volcanic eruption around 1600 BC is among the largest in the Mediterranean's recorded past?

The Thera eruption buried the Minoan town of Akrotiri under metres of ash on the island now called Santorini; Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii much later, in AD 79.

Which two cities did the 28 December 1908 earthquake and tsunami destroy?

The 28 December 1908 earthquake and tsunami destroyed Messina and Reggio Calabria on either side of the strait; modern estimates put the death toll at roughly 75,000 to 82,000.

Which volcano on Sicily is the tallest active volcano in Europe?

Etna, on Sicily's east coast, rises to more than 3,300 metres and erupts almost every year, which makes it Europe's tallest active volcano.

The Mediterranean's average salinity of 38 PSU is high because of what?

Evaporation exceeds precipitation and runoff across the basin, so salt is concentrated; the effect is strongest in the eastern Mediterranean, where salinity climbs to about 39 PSU.

Which seagrass, endemic to the Mediterranean, forms the sea's vast underwater meadows?

Posidonia oceanica, known as Neptune grass, grows only in the Mediterranean; its slow-growing meadows shelter fish nurseries, and a clone off Ibiza is thought to be tens of thousands of years old.

Which Greek sea surrounds Alonissos, site of the national marine park protecting the monk seal?

Alonissos and the Northern Sporades lie in the Aegean Sea; their national marine park, founded in 1992, is a key breeding refuge for the Mediterranean monk seal.

Roughly what share of the world's oil is shipped across the Mediterranean each year?

Roughly 370 million tonnes of oil, over 20% of the world total, move across the Mediterranean each year; some 250 to 300 tankers cross the sea daily and there are about 10 accidental spills a year.

The Port of Trieste is the start of a pipeline that supplies what share of Germany's oil demand?

The Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) from Trieste carries crude over the Alps to refineries that meet about 40% of Germany's oil demand, 90% of Austria's and half of the Czech Republic's.

How many migrants crossed the Mediterranean into Europe in 2015?

More than one million migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean in 2015, the peak of the European migrant crisis, most of them reaching Greek islands such as Lesbos from Turkey.

How many marine species are estimated to live in the Mediterranean?

Over 17,000 marine species are estimated to live in the Mediterranean, many descended from Atlantic stock that entered through Gibraltar; the western basin is the richer half.

Which international agreement aims to reduce pollution in the Mediterranean?

The Barcelona Convention, adopted in 1976 under the UN Environment Programme's Mediterranean Action Plan, commits the coastal states to curbing pollution; UNEP has estimated 650 million tonnes of sewage enter the sea yearly.

By what name from antiquity were the mountains flanking the Strait of Gibraltar known?

The Pillars of Hercules were the Rock of Gibraltar and its African counterpart, usually taken as Jebel Musa; the Latin name for the strait, Fretum Herculeum, comes from the same legend.

Besides the Greek city-states, which classical people colonised the Mediterranean coasts?

The Phoenicians, sailing from Tyre and Sidon, planted colonies from the Levant to Cadiz, including Carthage, which Rome later destroyed in the Punic Wars.

In which year did the Suez Canal open, redirecting Europe-Asia trade through the Mediterranean?

The Suez Canal opened on 17 November 1869; ports like Trieste, with direct rail links to Central Europe, suddenly found themselves on the fastest sea route to Asia.

The Rock of Gibraltar's name comes from an Arabic phrase honouring a commander; what does it mean?

Gibraltar derives from Jabal Tariq, 'Tariq's Mount', after Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Berber commander who landed there in 711 to begin the Muslim conquest of Iberia.

Which Spanish autonomous city sits on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar?

Ceuta, facing Gibraltar across the strait, is a Spanish autonomous city on the Moroccan coast; ferries link it to Algeciras, and a rail tunnel under the strait has been discussed since the 1980s.

The Rock of Gibraltar may have been a last outpost of which people, as late as 24,000 years ago?

Neanderthal sites at Gibraltar, such as Gorham's Cave, go back some 125,000 years, and contested dates suggest Neanderthals lingered there until roughly 24,000 to 28,000 years ago.

Roughly what area does the Mediterranean Sea cover?

The Mediterranean covers about 2.5 million km², roughly 970,000 square miles, an area comparable to Algeria, the largest country in Africa.

Which marginal sea of the Mediterranean lies between Spain and Morocco at its far western end?

The Alboran Sea is the westernmost arm of the Mediterranean, between southern Spain and Morocco just inside the Strait of Gibraltar; Atlantic inflow crosses it in a clockwise gyre.

Under which treaty was Gibraltar ceded in perpetuity to Britain?

Article X of the Peace of Utrecht (1713) ceded Gibraltar to Britain in perpetuity; Britain has held it ever since as a watch on the sea lane into the Mediterranean.

What is the average depth of the Mediterranean Sea?

The Mediterranean's average depth is about 1,500 m; its deepest recorded point, the Calypso Deep, plunges to more than 5,100 m.

Which strait separates Italy's heel from Albania at the mouth of the Adriatic?

The Strait of Otranto, about 72 km wide at its narrowest, separates Apulia from Albania and marks where the Adriatic Sea opens into the wider Mediterranean.

How many U-boats did Germany slip into the Mediterranean between September 1941 and May 1944?

Germany sent 62 U-boats into the Mediterranean, slipping them through the British-controlled strait submerged on the Atlantic inflow current; not one of them ever returned to the Atlantic.

What was the 1920s-30s scheme to dam the Strait of Gibraltar and lower the Mediterranean called?

Atlantropa, devised by German architect Herman Sörgel in the late 1920s, promised hydroelectric power and vast new land, at the cost of devastating the region's climate and ecology.

Who became the first known person to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar, in April 1928?

Mercedes Gleitze, the British swimmer who had conquered the English Channel in 1927, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in April 1928 in 12 hours 50 minutes, on her sixth attempt.