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| PHÎÒÎ: PHL |
Where’s the salt?
Salinity of the Black Sea is 18 promille, which is 18 g of sea salt in a liter of water. This is twice lower than in all other seas. The salinity is even lower (13 promille) in the Sea of Azov, which although is named a sea, is essentially a gulf of the Black Sea and in the Baltic Sea (5 promille). Actually, it is also not exactly correct to describe the shallow Baltic with such a low level of salinity as sea. It is in fact a massive and slightly salty estuary for all European rivers that flow into it.
Salinity in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea of 13-18 promille is ideal for people. The eyes do not get irritated, while this level of salinity is fully sufficient to give the curative effect. In terms of its chemical composition the salt here is just the same as in other seas – Sargasso, Mediterranean, White, Red or Yellow.
The invariability of the chemical composition of sea water (macro and micro-elements) in the earth’s waters of the world’s oceans is known as the Halley Principle. In five years, it will mark its 300th anniversary and only the most ignorant person will believe that salts in the seas abroad are more curative than the salt in the Black Sea.
The fact that other seas have a higher level of salinity, but the body of a person swimming in it will not absorb more of it and saltier water could cause inconveniences, seeing as salt burns the eyes and any wounds, is true.
So, in the end it turns out that by the salinity if the Black Sea is ideal for swimming and is one of a kind. The Caspian Sea with its 13 promille does not count, because it is classified as a lake and the composition of salt differs from that of sea salt.
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| PHÎÒÎ: wikipedia.org |
Not a sea for strangers
Brightly colored tropical fish are naturally a beautiful sight for tourists, but their colors were created by nature for other reasons. It is actually a warning signal: “I’m a mean thing, don’t touch me, I’m not tasty, I have spikes and I’m venomous!” The magnificent underwater world of coral reefs is in truth the bloodiest world on earth. Predators are particularly dangerous there and there are many venomous creatures swimming about.
In the Mediterranean, the situation is not as hair-raising, but there are still many creatures living underwater that can be dangerous for swimmers. Peaceful sea-urchins can pierce a person’s foot with their spikes if you accidentally step on one. Moreover, it is difficult to pull out such spikes because they are made of silicon and break up into tiny pieces like sand. The wound hurts and festers.
In the western part of the Mediterranean, where the most luxurious resorts of the Cote d’Azur, the Spanish Costa Brava and Costa Blanca and the island of Ibiza are located, Portuguese man o´ war slowly drift in from the high seas. The thin, meter-long tentacles of this beautiful jelly fish that is practically invisible in water can paralyze a human being or even kill them. The harmless in appearance myriapoda, which people often take in their hands out of curiosity to have a closer look, will leave a trail that resembles a miniature tank trail. Your and will become swollen and will hurt for a day.
In the Black Sea, you won’t find anything of this kind. Its inhabitants are extremely friendly towards people. Even if a Black Sea jelly fish stings you, it won’t be that painful.
The composition of friendly living creatures in the Black Sea was formed a long time ago and is problematic for aggressors to enter the sea. Indeed, they can only get here only though the narrow Bosphorus Straits.
The problem, however, is not in the narrowness of the strait, but its shallowness. Saltier and heavier Mediterranean water flows through it as if through a threshold and immediately hits the bottom of the sea. In such a one-kilometer waterfall, no creatures survive.
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| PHÎÒÎ: wikipedia.org |
Bronze jaws
The exotic marine life in the Black Sea is not glaringly obvious and an inexperienced person may not notice it right away. The veined rapa whelk, a type of sea snail, is one of a few “new occupants” (its larva was brought in to this region on the bottom of ships). Rapa whelk since became a symbol of the Black Sea and many tourists take home its shells. Rapa whelk salad can be found on the menu of any respectable Crimean restaurant.
Meanwhile, not many people know that this mollusk has a special gland with a liquid from which the ancient Greeks and Romans made a royal purple dye. The dye was so valuable that in ancient Rome, only the emperor and under age children were allowed to wear purple togas. Others were threatened to death for wearing such a toga.
The ancient process of producing purple paint was kept secret and did not reach our time. Despite this, a person can accidentally create the dye with its own hands. To do so one simply has to squeeze hard and break the gland using the fingers. With a bit of luck, the hand turns purple under the effect of the bright sun, human sweat and sea water.
The other wonder is the Glyceridae, a polychaete worm. It hides on the sandy and silty bottom of the sea under rocks and is so plain looking that divers do not pay attention to it. Even if they do, they will not notice it without the use of a magnifying glass, because they have to look into the worm’s throat where it hides its jaws for chewing small shells. Amazingly, the jaws of this worm are bronze on the edges as they are made of the alloy of copper, tin and zinc. Such bronze is not subject to corrosion in sea water. Moreover, the propellers of submarines and ships are made from such alloy.
Divers will also find the most ancient mollusk in the world known as chiton at the bottom of the sea. Its appearance resembles that of a woodlouse and rolls up into a ball when it detects danger. The chiton eats algae by scraping it off rocks, which is why its teeth are naturally made of stainless alloy steel.
Metal from water
You can find all the elements of the Mendeleev Periodic Table in sea water. With the exception of sodium and chlorine, all other elements are present in microscopic quantities. For example, there are only several micrograms of iron, zinc, tin and copper in one liter of sea water and even less than one microgram of gold. However, on a scale of the whole sea, it comes to million tons of metals.
The reserves are limitless, because the sea is connected by straits with the World Ocean, which has a quadrillion tonnes of dissolved metals. To this today, in some inexplicable way marine organisms can extract atoms of metals from the water and accumulate them in their bodies in such a quantity that they form bronze jaws and steel teeth. This phenomenon is called bio-accumulation. By they way, they do not accumulate gold, platinum and silver, simply because they do not need them.
As soon as the scientists figure out the mechanism of bio-accumulation and manage to reproduce it in a laboratory, we will no longer need open-hearth and blast furnaces with stinky pipes, Rinat Akhmetov will become the poorest person in Ukraine and more than a half othe members of the parliament will have to live on their civil servant wages.
So, how do you like our sea now? Were you planning to vacation at some seaside resort abroad?
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