Underwater river in the Black Sea on the map. An underwater river was discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea
The underwater world constantly presents scientists with surprises. While “Worlds” was exploring Baikal for the third year in a row, employees of the University of Leeds, using a special unmanned deep-sea vehicle, studied the bottom of the Black Sea and received an unexpected result.
It turned out that the warmest sea, to which the Russian Federation has access, contains an underwater river.
Moreover, this water artery, like its earthly “sisters,” contains sharp turns, tributaries, and also forms rapids and waterfalls.
Scientists estimate that every second the river carries 22 thousand cubic meters of water along the channel, which in some places is 115 feet (38 meters) deep, 37 miles (almost 60 kilometers) long, and 0.6 miles (about 970 meters) wide. For comparison, as the Telegraph reports, this is 350 times more than the flow of water in the Thames.
Such transport values make this river the sixth largest transported water flow.
Scientists explain the unimpeded flow of river water inside sea water at a speed of 4 miles per hour (about 6.5 km/h) by the difference in the density of these two “bodies of water.” The river discovered by researchers at the bottom of the Black Sea is saltier and therefore denser. According to the assumption of Dan Parsons, one of the authors of the work, and his colleagues, the river contains water from the Mediterranean Sea (it is saltier than the Black Sea), which gets there through the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus Strait, located near Istanbul.
Black Sea and surroundings // blackmore.ru
The existence of such rivers likely explains how living organisms can exist in deep-sea regions, far from the nutrient-rich waters that are close to the shores. “If the deep sea is a kind of desert, then a river like this literally gives life to that desert,” said Dan Parsons.
The river at the bottom of the Black Sea, which has not yet received any name, is the first underwater river whose existence has been reliably discovered.
Many scientists, after receiving sonar data from different seas and oceans, suggested the existence of rivers in certain places. It is assumed that the largest such river is located near the coast of Brazil, where the largest river on Earth, the Amazon, flows into the Atlantic Ocean.
Most of the underwater rivers were probably formed when the sea level was significantly lower than today.
According to Dr. Parsons, this research has important practical implications. Since scientists were able to demonstrate the existence of such a river with such a powerful flow, oil companies will need thorough information about the existence of such channels on the seabed before building oil rigs.
In light of the recent developments in the Gulf of Mexico, one cannot but agree with the Leeds scientist.
The only underwater river in the world's oceans has been discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea. It is about 70 kilometers (37 nautical miles) long and more than 1 kilometer (half a mile) wide. The speed of the water flow in it is 350 times stronger than the Thames.
This sensational discovery was made using a specially created controlled submarine by a group of scientists from the University of Leeds (UK). Along the course of this unique river there are rapids and waterfalls, river banks and floodplains.
The trench formed by the flow of this underwater river is up to 35 meters deep in places. The speed of water moving in it is 4 miles per hour (about 7.5 km/h). The river, which is small at first glance, has a colossal volume of moving water - 22 thousand cubic meters per second. According to scientists, if such a river were located on land, it would become the sixth largest in the world by this indicator.
Scientists believe that this river was formed due to the penetration of the more saline water of the Sea of Marmara through the Bosphorus Strait into the less saline environment of the Black Sea. The head of the research team, Dr. Dan Parsons, notes that the water in such channels is denser than the surrounding sea because it has higher salinity and greater sediment.
Unlike ocean trenches and other geological formations that form in the deepest parts of the ocean, due to the movement of tectonic plates, the direction of an underwater river channel meanders and is formed according to the same laws as on land.
“The current of the river is such that, flowing through the sea shelf, it, like a river on earth, falls into abyssal plains - deep-sea expanses of oceanic basins and depressions of marginal seas. These are a kind of deserts of the marine world. At the same time, channels and currents are able to create the necessary conditions and supply deep-sea The inhabitants are supplied with nutrients and ingredients necessary to sustain life. What is surprising is that this is the only active underwater river found so far.
Scientists believe that there are other underwater rivers, and perhaps one of them is located near the coast of Brazil, where the Amazon flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Presumably, such natural anomalies formed when sea level was significantly lower. Then the rivers, according to research by scientists, could reach 4 kilometers in length and several kilometers in width. Despite this, the channel found in the Black Sea, although much smaller, is so far the only active and living confirmation of the existence of underwater rivers.
This discovery will help us learn more about how underwater rivers supply the depths of seas and oceans far from the shores with nutritional enzymes and what effect this has on underwater flora and fauna.
Associate Professor of the Department of Oceanology at St. Petersburg State University, Candidate of Geographical Sciences Igor Shilov talks about the history of studying the Bosphorus Strait: “The Bosphorus Strait has long been under close study by oceanologists around the world, as it is fraught with many mysterious and inexplicable phenomena. All experiments, as a rule, lead researchers to interesting results.
The study of this strait began in 1885, when a certain officer Makarov, in his famous work “On the exchange of waters of the Black and Mediterranean Seas,” highlighted his research that the waters of the Bosphorus Strait are very stratified and its currents go in two opposite directions. The upper layers move from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea, and the bottom layers in the opposite direction. With this research, Makarov laid the foundations for the study of the hydrology of the straits of the World Ocean.
The study of this area has found worldwide interest, and science has begun to “dive” deeper and deeper into the mysteries of hydrology. One after another, peaks, volcanoes, the deepest chasms, huge ridges were plotted on the maps...
The discovery of powerful water flows at a depth of 50-100 meters in the equatorial zone of the Pacific Ocean was also sensational. True, the American oceanologists who discovered it could not immediately establish the exact boundaries of this channel, which was no longer enclosed in “liquid shores”, but in a “water pipe”. Scientists were able to establish that the flow crosses the entire Pacific Ocean near the equator. This phenomenon was named after the head of the 1951 expedition and was named the Cromwell Current.
A few years later, Soviet oceanologists detected fast jets of water at a depth of 50-250 meters at a number of points in the equatorial zone of the Atlantic. However, the first measurements were carried out in areas very distant from each other - they did not allow us to conclude that a single flow had been detected. The desire to study such mysterious underwater phenomena is literally inexhaustible, and the world’s oceans continue to delight us to this day.”
On August 1, 2010, British scientists from the University of Leeds discovered the only underwater river in the world's oceans at the bottom of the Black Sea.
The length of the underwater river is 37 nautical miles (68 km.524 m), its width is more than half a mile (1 nautical mile = 1852 meters), and the speed of the underwater river is about 4 nautical miles per hour (7040 meters per hour). The river forms a deep trench in the seabed, up to 35 meters deep. The channels at the bottom of the Black Sea were formed about 6 thousand years ago by the waters of the Mediterranean and Marmara Seas flowing through the Bosporus Strait into the Black Sea.
The enormous volume of water transported by an underwater river is equal to 22 thousand cubic meters per second. According to this indicator, the underwater river in the Black Sea would rank sixth among the world's rivers if it flowed on land. For comparison, the Amazon ranks first in the world in terms of the volume of water moved, which is 220 thousand cubic meters. meters per second.
Using autonomous underwater vehicles, scientists discovered that the underwater river has classic river banks, floodplains, rapids and real waterfalls. Scientists note a swirling of water in the whirlpools of an underwater river, unusual for the Northern Hemisphere, in violation of the force of Kriolis. The spirals of a whirlpool in an underwater river in the Black Sea twist clockwise.
The underwater river carries the waters of the saltier Sea of Marmara into the Black Sea. This is an interesting place for diving and underwater photography.
The salinity of the water of the Sea of Marmara is 22.5-26%o, this high concentration of all substances dissolved in water (mainly salts) remains at great depths of the Black Sea, while in the middle part of the sea the water salinity is 10-12% o, and in the northwestern part - 17% o.
For comparison: the salinity of the Mediterranean Sea is 37-38%0 in the west, 38-39%0 in the east; the salinity of the Adriatic Sea is 30-35%o in the north, and up to 38%o in the South, that is, every kilogram of water contains from 30 to 38 grams of all salts dissolved in water.
The water balance of the Black Sea consists of:
atmospheric precipitation (+230 km³ per year);
continental river flows (+310 km³ per year);
water inflows from the Sea of Azov (+30 km³ per year);
evaporation of water from the sea surface (−360 km³ per year);
removal of surface waters of the Black Sea through the Bosphorus Strait (−210 km³ per year).
The influx of water into the Black Sea from the underwater river is equal to 22 thousand cubic meters per second.
The amount of water inflow into the Black Sea exceeds the amount of outflow and evaporation of water from the surface of the sea, as a result of which the water level in the Black Sea rises and exceeds the water level of the Sea of Marmara. Thanks to this, an upper current is formed, directed through the Bosphorus Strait. The underwater river in the Black Sea is a lower current directed through the Bosphorus in the opposite direction. Along these two currents between two seas.
The interaction of these currents maintains the vertical stratification of the sea, but the circulation of water in the Black Sea mainly covers the surface layer of water. The Black Sea is the world's largest body of water with unstirred deep waters. The Black Sea is a body of water in which there is practically no circulation of water between layers with different mineralization.
» article is one of many. So, earlier, in the article “The Sea of Hydrogen Sulfide in the Black Sea” we wrote about the fact that in the Black Sea there is another sea - the sea of hydrogen sulfide. As it turned out, the surprises of the Black Sea did not end there, and in addition to the sea within the sea, the Black Sea also boasts a river under water.
River under water. The mystery of the Black Sea was partially solved thanks to scanning the surface of the Black Sea by English scientists. The discovery of an underwater river in the Black Sea is significant in that it is the first discovery of its kind in the world, and it opened the eyes of scientists to the existence of such a phenomenon as underwater rivers. Sea currents are unpredictable and constantly changing, so their study is very difficult, but analyzing the nature of the river underwater is the first step towards identifying similar phenomena in other seas and oceans.
Despite the fact that the Black Sea has existed for thousands of years and has been the subject of scientific research for all the years of its existence, there are still secrets under its surface that can surprise scientists. Another such discovery managed to surprise British scientists who were exploring the depths of the Black Sea. They managed to find a huge underwater river at the bottom of the sea. The river flow has been calculated and, as it turns out, its volume is an impressive 22,000 m 3 per second. Well, or, converting to cubic kilometers and minutes, 13.2 km 3 per minute.
This powerful stream of water, which moves at a speed of 7.5 km/hour, has a length of about sixty kilometers. The depth of the river under water in the Black Sea is up to 35 meters. According to the researchers,
“It flows down the sea shelf, much like a river on land. The plains in the depths of our oceans are like the deserts of the marine world, but these canals can supply the nutrients necessary for desert life."
This river was formed a very, very long time ago. Around the same time as described in the article “The Flood, or what the end of the world will not be.” So, somewhere 7-8 thousand years ago, the bottom of the Black Sea was a fertile plain, where people lived, cultivated gardens, fought, loved... And suddenly (or not suddenly - now it’s impossible to say for sure) an isthmus between the Mediterranean Sea and this fertile plain was destroyed. And, since the water level in the Mediterranean Sea was higher than the bottom of the fertile lowland, this lowland was flooded with a huge flow of water.
So, the waters of the Mediterranean Sea broke through into the waters of the future Black Sea and formed a network of trenches that are active to this day. One of them is our river under water, which continues to carry water from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea - but no longer on the surface of the earth, as it was thousands of years ago, but under water.
Why don't the waters of the river and sea mix? There is a simple answer to this question - due to different densities and temperatures. If the average water temperature in the Black Sea at a depth of 1500 meters is 9 degrees, then the underground river is several degrees colder. The underwater river is much denser than the surrounding waters due to its greater salinity - after all, it is fed by the Mediterranean Sea, which is saltier than the Black Sea.
Scientists say that the river under the Black Sea is saltier and denser than the surrounding seawater, in part because it carries a lot of organic sediment and dissolved oxygen. It flows along the seabed, carrying water to the bottom plains, just like rivers on land. Bottom plains in the sea are like deserts on land. They are far from coastal waters, rich in useful substances, and there is practically no life there. Feeding from such underwater rivers comes in very handy - in this case, the underwater river becomes a kind of artery that carries food and oxygen to the bottom of the sea.
For the Black Sea, this process is more relevant than for other bodies of water, since in the Black Sea there is also a sea of hydrogen sulfide. Where only bacteria that eat organic matter can live. And who live without access to oxygen. Whereas within our underwater river, it is quite possible that a unique life, adapted only to these conditions, has developed - in an underwater river under a sea of hydrogen sulfide under the Black Sea :)
By the way, it is a practically unknown fact that this underwater river was known to the ancient Greeks. So, when the Greeks sailed into the Black Sea, they threw a load of stones on a rope from the ship. And the underwater river pulled the cargo - and with it the ship for some time, making the work of the sailors easier.
So, in addition to hydrogen sulfide, there is another mystery of the Black Sea - a river under water.
Based on materials from http://www.terra-z.ru/archives/15228
The discovery of an underwater river in the Black Sea is significant in that it is the first discovery of its kind in the world, and it opened the eyes of scientists to the existence of such a phenomenon as underwater rivers. Sea currents are characterized by unpredictability and constant changes, so their study is very difficult, but analyzing the nature of the Black Sea “river” is the first step towards identifying similar phenomena in other seas and oceans.
The underwater river, which does not yet have a name, was finally and comprehensively described by scientists in 2010. Of course, further research will continue for a long time, but now we can rightfully say that a deep river flows along the bottom of the Black Sea. It begins its run from the side of the Bosphorus channel and then flows along the Turkish coast along the bottom of the sea. The underwater river has a channel about 35 meters deep, a kilometer wide and 60 kilometers long. It, like many river beds on land, has rapids, waterfalls and whirlpools, and the water in them swirls in the “abnormal” direction, clockwise, and not, like the entire Northern Hemisphere, counterclockwise.
Why don't the waters of the river and sea mix? There is a simple answer to this question - due to different densities and temperatures. If the average water temperature in the Black Sea at a depth of 1500 meters is 9 degrees, then the underground river is several degrees colder. The underwater river is much denser than the surrounding waters due to its greater salinity - after all, it is fed by the Mediterranean Sea, which is saltier than the Black Sea. The river bed was formed approximately 6 thousand years ago, when the Mediterranean Sea broke through a narrow strait into the Black Sea basin. The pool filled with water, and the seething streams lay at the bottom, where they remain to this day. Scientists suggest that the underwater current carries nutrients into the abyssal waters, thereby feeding the meager life forms living there.
The discovered river is one of a kind. Although scientists assume that there are a great many such rivers at the bottom of the ocean, they have not yet gotten around to discovering them.
Underwater river in the Black Sea, the result of a color 3-D scan
Bosphorus Strait - the beginning of an underwater river
Scheme of underwater layers in the Black Sea