Black Sea undersea river

Common card · No. 441597

The Black Sea undersea river is a current of particularly saline water flowing through the Bosphorus Strait and along the seabed of the Black Sea. The discovery of the river, announced on 1 August 2010, was made by scientists at the University of Leeds, and is the first of its kind in the world. The undersea river stems from salty water spilling through the Bosphorus Strait from the Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea, where the water has a lower salt content. The river system formed roughly 7,500 years ago when the Bosphorus developed its two-way depth-separated flow. Scientists have previously discovered channels running along ocean floors, based on sonar scanning. One of the largest of these runs from the mouth of the Amazon River into the Atlantic Ocean. Though it was suspected that these channels might function as rivers, it was only with the discovery of the Black Sea river that this suspicion was confirmed. Because of the power and unpredictability of these streams, they have been...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Public domain