Today, The Grandma has been reading about the SuezCanal, the artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, that was inaugurated on a day like today in 1869.
The Suez Canal, in Egyptian Arabic قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, Qanāt es-Suwais, is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt). The 193.30 km long canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia.
In 1858, Ferdinand de Lesseps formed the Suez Canal Company for the express purpose of building the canal. Construction of the canal lasted from 1859 to 1869. The canal officially opened on 17 November 1869.
It offers vessels a direct route between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, avoiding the South Atlantic and southern Indian oceans and reducing the journey distance from the Arabian Sea to London by approximately 8,900 kilometres, to 10 days at 37 km/h or 8 days at 44 km/h.
The canal extends from the northern terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez.
In 2021, more than 20,600 vessels traversed the canal (an average of 56 per day).
The original canal featured a single-lane waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass and the Great Bitter Lake. It contained, according to Alois Negrelli's plans, no locks, with seawater flowing freely through it. In general, the water in the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez.
The canal was the property of the Egyptian government, but European shareholders, mostly British and French, owned the concessionary company which operated it until July 1956, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised it -an event which led to the Suez Crisis of October-November 1956.
The canal is operated and maintained by the state-owned Suez Canal Authority (SCA) of Egypt. Under the Convention of Constantinople, it may be used in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag. Nevertheless, the canal has played an important military strategic role as a naval short-cut and choke point. Navies with coastlines and bases on both the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea (Egypt and Israel) have a particular interest in the Suez Canal.
After Egypt closed the Suez Canal at the beginning of the Six-Day War on 5 June 1967, the canal remained closed for precisely eight years, reopening on 5 June 1975.
The Egyptian government launched construction in 2014 to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km to speed up the canal's transit time. The expansion intended to nearly double the capacity of the Suez Canal, from 49 to 97 ships per day. At a cost of LE 59.4 billion (US$9 billion), this project was funded with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities and individuals.
The Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel in 2016. This side channel, at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal. As the East Container Terminal is located on the Canal itself, before the construction of the new side channel it was not possible to berth or unberth vessels at the terminal while a convoy was running.
Ancient west-east canals were built to facilitate travel from the Nile to the Red Sea. One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of Senusret II or Ramesses II. Another canal, probably incorporating a portion of the first, was constructed under the reign of Necho II, but the only fully functional canal was engineered and completed by Darius I.
By the 8th century, a navigable canal existed between Old Cairo and the Red Sea, but accounts vary as to who ordered its construction -either Trajan or 'Amr ibn al-'As, or Umar. This canal was reportedly linked to the River Nile at Old Cairo and ended near modern Suez.
A geography treatise De Mensura Orbis Terrae written by the Irish monk Dicuil (born late 8th century) reports a conversation with another monk, Fidelis, who had sailed on the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the first half of the 8th century.
The Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur is said to have ordered this canal closed in 767 to prevent supplies from reaching Arabian detractors.
Despite the construction challenges that could have been the result of the alleged difference in sea levels, the idea of finding a shorter route to the east remained alive.
In 1830, General Francis Chesney submitted a report to the British government that stated that there was no difference in elevation and that the Suez Canal was feasible, but his report received no further attention. Lieutenant Waghorn established his Overland Route, which transported post and passengers to India via Egypt.
Linant de Bellefonds, a French explorer of Egypt, became chief engineer of Egypt's Public Works. In addition to his normal duties, he surveyed the Isthmus of Suez and made plans for the Suez Canal. French Saint-Simonianists showed an interest in the canal and in 1833, Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin tried to draw Muhammad Ali's attention to the canal but was unsuccessful. Alois Negrelli, the Italian-Austrian railroad pioneer, became interested in the idea in 1836.
In 1846, Prosper Enfantin's Société d'Études du Canal de Suez invited a number of experts, among them Robert Stephenson, Negrelli and Paul-Adrien Bourdaloue to study the feasibility of the Suez Canal, with the assistance of Linant de Bellefonds. Bourdaloue's survey of the isthmus was the first generally accepted evidence that there was no practical difference in altitude between the two seas. Britain, however, feared that a canal open to everyone might interfere with its India trade and therefore preferred a connection by train from Alexandria via Cairo to Suez, which Stephenson eventually built.
The canal opened under French control in November 1869. The opening ceremonies began at Port Said on the evening of 15 November, with illuminations, fireworks, and a banquet on the yacht of the Khedive Isma'il Pasha of Egypt and Sudan.
The royal guests arrived the following morning: the Emperor Franz Joseph I, the French Empress Eugenie in the Imperial yacht L'Aigle, the Crown Prince of Prussia, and Prince Louis of Hesse. Other international guests included the American natural historian H. W. Harkness. In the afternoon there were blessings of the canal with both Muslim and Christian ceremonies, a temporary mosque and church having been built side by side on the beach. In the evening there were more illuminations and fireworks.
When built, the canal was 164 km long and 8 m deep. After several enlargements, it is 193.30 km long, 24 m deep and 205 metres wide. It consists of the northern access channel of 22 km, the canal itself of 162.25 km and the southern access channel of 9 km.
The opening of the canal created the first salt-water passage between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Although the Red Sea is about 1.2 m higher than the eastern Mediterranean, the current between the Mediterranean and the middle of the canal at the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer.
The road to India, the Suez Canal, the oil fields of Mosul, the whole complex of political and strategic requirements that drew Britain into Palestine in 1918, began with the enterprise of the Elizabethan merchant adventurers.
Today is the World Oceans Day and The Grandma and her friends, who are in Malta, have decided to talk about the MediterraneanSea, source of culture, history and biodiversity.
The Mediterranean Sea determines the lives of the inhabitants of its coasts and provides them food, resources and culture. Although some lines mark the borders to create countries, share languages or religions, there is something in common in these countries: the Sea and its role as a source of culture, commerce and communications.
The Mediterranean countries have a special idiosyncrasy and although these countries shares different languages or religions, they have a Mediterranean lifestyle which makes them more similar than they can think.
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa and on the east by the Levant. Although the sea is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is usually identified as a separate body of water.
Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years, the Messinian salinity crisis, before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.
Posidonia on the Mediterranean seabed
It covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km2, but its connection to the Atlantic, the Strait of Gibraltar, is only 14 km wide. The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of 1,500 m and the deepest recorded point is 5,267 m in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea.
The sea is bordered on the north by Europe, the east by Asia, and in the south by Africa. The Mediterranean Sea, including the Sea of Marmara, connected by the Dardanelles to the Aegean Sea, has a surface area of approximately 2,510,000 square km.
The sea was an important route for merchants and travellers of ancient times that allowed for trade and cultural exchange between emergent peoples of the region.
The history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies.
The Ancient Greeks called the Mediterranean simply η θάλασσαthe Sea or sometimes η μεγάλη θάλασσαthe Great Sea, η ημέτερα θάλασσαOur Sea, or η θάλασσα η καθ'εμάς the sea around us. The Romans called it Mare MagnumGreat Sea or Mare InternumInternal Sea and, starting with the Roman Empire, Mare NostrumOur Sea. The term Mare Mediterrāneum appears later: Solinus apparently used it in the 3rd century. It means in the middle of land, inland in Latin, a compound of medius 'middle', terra 'land, earth' and -āneus 'having the nature of'.
The Mediterranean Sea in Rhodes, Greece
Ancient civilizations were located around the Mediterranean shores and were greatly influenced by their proximity to the sea.
It provided routes for trade, colonization, and war, as well as food, from fishing and the gathering of other seafood, for numerous communities throughout the ages. Due to the shared climate, geology, and access to the sea, cultures centered on the Mediterranean tended to have some extent of intertwined culture and history.
Large islands in the Mediterranean include Cyprus, Crete, Euboea, Rhodes, Lesbos, Chios, Kefalonia, Corfu, Limnos, Samos, Naxos and Andros in the Eastern Mediterranean; Sicily, Cres, Krk, Brač, Hvar, Pag, Korčula and Malta in the central Mediterranean; Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands: Ibiza, Majorca, and Menorca in the Western Mediterranean.
The typical Mediterranean climate has hot, humid, and dry summers and mild, rainy winters. Crops of the region include olives, grapes, oranges, tangerines, and cork. Being nearly landlocked affects conditions in the Mediterranean Sea: for instance, tides are very limited as a result of the narrow connection with the Atlantic Ocean. The Mediterranean is characterised and immediately recognised by its deep blue colour.
Dolphins in the Mediterranean Sea
Evaporation greatly exceeds precipitation and river runoff in the Mediterranean, a fact that is central to the water circulation within the basin.
Evaporation is especially high in its eastern half, causing the water level to decrease and salinity to increase eastward.
The salinity at 5 m depth is 3.8%. The temperature of the water in the deepest part of the Mediterranean Sea is 13.2 °C.
The geologic history of the Mediterranean Sea is complex. Underlain by oceanic crust, the sea basin was once thought to be a tectonic remnant of the ancient Tethys Ocean; it is now known to be a structurally younger basin, called the Neotethys, which was first formed by the convergence of the African and Eurasian plates during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic.
Because it is a near-landlocked body of water in a normally dry climate, the Mediterranean is subject to intensive evaporation and the precipitation of evaporites. The Messinian salinity crisis started about six million years ago when the Mediterranean became landlocked, and then essentially dried up.
Gli Faraglioni in Capri, Naples
There are salt deposits accumulated on the bottom of the basin of more than a million cubic kilometres, in some places more than three kilometres thick. A shallow submarine ridge, the Strait of Sicily, between the island of Sicily and the coast of Tunisia divides the sea in two main subregions: the Western Mediterranean, with an area of about 850 thousand km2; and the Eastern Mediterranean, of about 1.65 million km2. A characteristic of the coastal Mediterranean are submarine karst springs or vruljas, which discharge pressurised groundwater into the coastal seawater from below the surface; the discharge water is usually fresh, and sometimes may be thermal.
During Mesozoic and Cenozoic times, as the northwest corner of Africa converged on Iberia, it lifted the Betic-Rif mountain belts across southern Iberia and northwest Africa. There the development of the intramontane Betic and Rif basins led to creating two roughly-parallel marine gateways between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
A manta ray in the Mediterranean Sea
Dubbed the Betic and Rifian corridors, they progressively closed during middle and late Miocene times; perhaps several times.
During late Miocene times the closure of the Betic Corridor triggered the so-called Messinian salinity crisis, when the Mediterranean almost entirely dried out.
The time of beginning of the Messinian salinity crisis was recently estimated astronomically at 5.96 mya, and it persisted for some 630,000 years until about 5.3 mya.
After the initial drawdown and re-flooding there followed more episodes, the total number is debated, of sea drawdowns and re-floodings for the duration of the Messinian salinity crisis.
It ended when the Atlantic Ocean last re-flooded the basin, creating the Strait of Gibraltar and causing the Zanclean flood, at the end of the Miocene, 5.33 mya.
The present-day Atlantic gateway, the Strait of Gibraltar, originated in the early Pliocene via the Zanclean Flood. The former gateway closed about 6 mya, causing the Messinian salinity crisis; the latter or possibly both gateways closed during the earlier Tortonian times, causing a Tortonian salinity crisis, from 11.6 to 7.2 mya, which occurred well before the Messinian salinity crisis and lasted much longer.
Catalan Bay, Gibraltar, United Kingdom
Both crises resulted in broad connections of the mainlands of Africa and Europe, which thereby normalised migrations of flora and fauna, especially large mammals including primates, between the two continents.
The Vallesian crisis indicates a typical extinction and replacement of mammal species in Europe during Tortonian times following climatic upheaval and overland migrations of new species.
The near-completely enclosed configuration of the Mediterranean basin has enabled the oceanic gateways to dominate seawater circulation and the environmental evolution of the sea and basin. Circulation patterns are also affected by several other factors, including climate, bathymetry, and water chemistry and temperature, which are interactive and can induce precipitation of evaporites.
Today, evaporation of surface seawater is more than the supply of fresh water by precipitation and coastal drainage systems, causing the salinity of the Mediterranean to be much higher than that of the Atlantic, so much so that the saltier Mediterranean waters sink below the waters incoming from the Atlantic, causing a two-layer flow across the Gibraltar strait: that is, an outflow submarine current of warm saline Mediterranean water, counterbalanced by an inflow surface current of less saline cold oceanic water from the Atlantic.
A Mediterranean red sea star aka Echinaster sepositus
The end of the Miocene changed the Mediterranean basin. Fossil evidence reveals a humid subtropical climate with rainfall in the summer supporting laurel forests.
The shift to a Mediterranean climate occurred largely within the last 3 million years, as summer rainfall decreased.
The subtropical laurel forests retreated; and even as they persisted on the islands of Macaronesia off the Atlantic coast of Iberia and North Africa, the present Mediterranean vegetation evolved, dominated by coniferous trees and sclerophyllous trees and shrubs with small, hard, waxy leaves that prevent moisture loss in the dry summers. Much of these forests and shrublands have been altered beyond recognition by thousands of years of human habitation. There are now very few relatively intact natural areas in what was once a heavily wooded region.
The Mediterranean Sea in Tunisia
Because of its latitudinal position and its land-locked configuration, the Mediterranean is especially sensitive to astronomically induced climatic variations, which are well documented in its sedimentary record.
Since the Mediterranean is involved in the deposition of eolian dust from the Sahara during dry periods, whereas riverine detrital input prevails during wet ones, the Mediterranean marine sapropel-bearing sequences provide high-resolution climatic information.
As a result of the drying of the sea during the Messinian salinity crisis, the marine biota of the Mediterranean are derived primarily from the Atlantic Ocean. The North Atlantic is considerably colder and more nutrient-rich than the Mediterranean, and the marine life of the Mediterranean has had to adapt to its differing conditions in the five million years since the basin was reflooded.
Sea urchins on the Mediterranean seabed
The Alboran Sea is a transition zone between the two seas, containing a mix of Mediterranean and Atlantic species.
The Alboran Sea has the largest population of bottlenose dolphins in the Western Mediterranean, is home to the last population of harbour porpoises in the Mediterranean, and is the most important feeding grounds for loggerhead sea turtles in Europe. The Alboran Sea also hosts important commercial fisheries, including sardines and swordfish. The Mediterranean monk seals live in the Aegean Sea in Greece.
The region has a variety of geological hazards which have closely interacted with human activity and land use patterns. Among others, in the eastern Mediterranean, the Thera eruption, dated to the 17th or 16th century BC, caused a large tsunami that some experts hypothesise devastated the Minoan civilisation on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe that inspired the Atlantis legend.
Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland, while others as Mount Etna and Stromboli are to be found on neighbouring islands. The region around Vesuvius including the Phlegraean Fields Caldera west of Naples are quite active and constitute the most densely populated volcanic region in the world and eruptive event may occur within decades.
Stromboli Volcano in Stromboli Island, Sicily
Vesuvius itself is regarded as quite dangerous due to a tendency towards explosive, Plinian, eruptions. It is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unlike the vast multidirectional Ocean currents in open Oceans within their respective Oceanic zones; biodiversity in the Mediterranean Sea is that of a stable one due to the subtle but strong locked nature of currents which affects favorably, even the smallest macroscopic type of Volcanic Life Form.
The stable Marine ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea and sea temperature provides a nourishing environment for life in the deep sea to flourish while assuring a balanced Aquatic ecosystem excluded from any external deep oceanic factors.
An octopus on the Mediterranean seabed
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 created the first salt-water passage between the Mediterranean and Red Sea. The Red Sea is higher than the Eastern Mediterranean, so the canal serves as a tidal strait that pours Red Sea water into the Mediterranean.
The Bitter Lakes, which are hyper-saline natural lakes that form part of the canal, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalised with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and animals from the Red Sea have begun to colonisethe Eastern Mediterranean.
The Red Sea is generally saltier and more nutrient-poor than the Atlantic, so the Red Sea species have advantages over Atlantic species in the salty and nutrient-poor Eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, Red Sea species invade the Mediterranean biota, and not vice versa; this phenomenon is known as the Lessepsian migration, after Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French engineer, or Erythrean invasion.
A seahorse in the Mediterranean Sea
The construction of the Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in the 1960s reduced the inflow of freshwater and nutrient-rich silt from the Nile into the Eastern Mediterranean, making conditions there even more like the Red Sea and worsening the impact of the invasive species.
Invasive species have become a major component of the Mediterranean ecosystem and have serious impacts on the Mediterranean ecology, endangering many local and endemic Mediterranean species.
A first look at some groups of exotic species show that more than 70% of the non-indigenous decapods and about 63% of the exotic fishes occurring in the Mediterranean are of Indo Pacific origin, introduced into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal.
A whale in the Mediterranean Coast
This makes the Canal as the first pathway of arrival of alien species into the Mediterranean. The impacts of some lessepsian species have proven to be considerable mainly in the Levantine basin of the Mediterranean, where they are replacing native species and becoming a familiar sight.
In recent decades, the arrival of exotic species from the tropical Atlantic has become a noticeable feature. Whether this reflects an expansion of the natural area of these species that now enter the Mediterranean through the Gibraltar strait, because of a warming trend of the water caused by global warming; or an extension of the maritime traffic; or is simply the result of a more intense scientific investigation, is still an open question.
By 2100 the overall level of the Mediterranean could rise between 3 to 61 cm as a result of the effects of climate change. This could have adverse effects on populations across the Mediterranean.
Ithaca Island, Ionian/Mediterranean Sea, Greece
Rising sea levels will also mean rising salt water levels in Malta's groundwater supply and reduce the availability of drinking water.
A 30 cm rise in sea level would flood 200 square kilometres of the Nile Delta, displacing over 500,000 Egyptians.
Coastal ecosystems also appear to be threatened by sea level rise, especially enclosed seas such as the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. These seas have only small and primarily east-west movement corridors, which may restrict northward displacement of organisms in these areas.
Pollution in this region has been extremely high in recent years. The Barcelona Convention aims to reduce pollution in the Mediterranean Sea and protect and improve the marine environment in the area, thereby contributing to its sustainable development.
A sea turtle in the Mediterranean Sea
Many marine species have been almost wiped out because of the sea's pollution.
One of them is the Mediterranean monk seal which is considered to be among the world's most endangered marine mammals.
The Mediterranean is also plagued by marine debris. A 1994 study of the seabed using trawl nets around the coasts of Europe reported a particularly high mean concentration of debris; an average of 1,935 items per km2. Plastic debris accounted for 76%, of which 94% was plastic bags.
Fish stock levels in the Mediterranean Sea are alarmingly low. The European Environment Agency says that more than 65% of all fish stocks in the region are outside safe biological limits and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, that some of the most important fisheries, such as albacore and bluefin tuna, hake, marlin, swordfish, red mullet and sea bream, are threatened.
Whale shark aka the rhincodon typus
There are clear indications that catch size and quality have declined, often dramatically, and in many areas larger and longer-lived species have disappeared entirely from commercial catches. Large open water fish like tuna have been a shared fisheries resource for thousands of years but the stocks are now dangerously low.
In 1999, Greenpeace published a report revealing that the amount of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean had decreased by over 80% in the previous 20 years and government scientists warn that without immediate action the stock will collapse.
A voyage to Europe in the summer of 1921 gave me the first opportunity of observing the wonderful blue opalescence of the Mediterranean Sea. It seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its origin to the scattering of sunlight by the molecules of the water.
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