Three Facts About the Mediterranean Sea

The Earth's largest inland sea, the Mediterranean Sea is bordered by over 20 countries, belonging to three continents, and represents 0.81 percent of the Earth's total water surface. It is not completely landlocked, being connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar and to two other seas. The name Mediterranean derives from Latin, meaning "in the middle of land."

Age

The Mediterranean Sea is about 5.5 million years old, according to noted travel writer John F. Prevost. It formed when land where the Strait of Gibraltar now is, crumbled and broke away. Then, water from the Atlantic Ocean flooded into a parched basin that was even deeper than the Grand Canyon, to form the sea. Man would not set eyes on the Mediterranean Sea for at least another 5.3 million years, because he had not yet appeared on the earth.

Size

According to biologists Jacques Blondel and others, the total length of the sea, which stretches from Gibraltar to Lebanon, is roughly 2,361 miles. Its maximum width is about 1,118 miles. The average width is around 435 miles. The total volume of water in the sea is approximately 887,677 cubic miles. Some oceanographers believe it is more accurate to consider such a large body of water to be an ocean, rather than a sea.

Tsunamis

According to Russian tsunami scientists Sergei Leonidovich Soloviev, there have been about 300 tsunamis and similar phenomena in the Mediterranean Sea, over the last four thousand years. They have affected countries that include Albania, Croatia, Greece, Italy and Montenegro. Epicenters of tsunamigenic earthquakes are widely spread out across the Mediterranean Sea. The western coast of Greece, for example, is an especially active tsunami area.

Pollution

The sea is of increasing concern to environmental scientists because of the amount of pollution within it. There is far more pollution entering the sea than can escape, warns one of the founders of the American Society for Environmental History, Johnson Donald Hughes, on account of the narrowness of the connecting waterways. The total amount of pollution is therefore steadily rising. Pollutants include polychlorinated biphenyls, pesticides, manure and oil from spills.