The cleanest sea in the world: myths and facts

By the beginning of the 21st century, pollution of the Worldthe ocean has become known so much that it is time to look for the cleanest sea in the world, but clean sea in general. At the risk of not finding it ever! The barbarous attitude of man to nature is clearly seen in contrasting example. In the literal sense of the word, killing the Aral Sea in Eurasia in just a quarter of a century, around this time, people "gave" the Earth to a man-made "continent" - the Great Pacific garbage spot, which, according to some estimates, exceeds Australia and New Zealand, taken ...

So are the cleanest seas in the world? It depends on what is meant by the concept of "purity". Colorful advertising brochures travel agencies do not count - it is clear that they will not say a word of truth. Everything is known, as always, on one's own bitter experience. Some resort areas on the sea coast, perhaps, deserve the title of the purest. But the sea itself - by no means.

The Black Sea was once famous and cleanwater, and rich fisheries, and species diversity. In the 20th century, because of the USSR and Turkey, the world's most blue sea became one of the dirtiest in the world. The situation here does not improve because of the slow water exchange.

The Mediterranean that is communicating with it seems to bethings are better: its waters are refreshed every 70 years by the Atlantic Ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar. But over the past half century, sewage, industry and the tourist boom, which has spread even to formerly reserved remote islands, have turned the Mediterranean ecosystem into a sick one. The leading polluters are Spain, Italy and France.
If you continue your journey through the Suez Canal,then we get to the Red Sea. In the warm, transparent water, there is an amazingly beautiful and diverse underwater world. It would seem, here it is, the cleanest sea in the world! Do not hurry. The Egyptian coast of the Red Sea was densely overgrown with piers at hotels, to which boats and yachts moored. And here the tourist receives the whole "civilizational" set: fuel divorce, sewage after showering and dishwashing, and often fecal sewage. All this evaporates in the heat with a corresponding odor. Experienced travelers are advised to choose a beach that is remote from piers, has no gentle descent and immediately goes into the depths. So far, the Red Sea has enough strength to self-clean. And the full renewal, thanks to the Gulf of Aden, occurs "only" every 15 years.

Willy-nilly you will believe that the cleanest sea in the world -Dead, on the border of Israel and Jordan. In fact, its salinity reaches such a monstrous magnitude (300-350%) that it can not live any marine organisms except for some bacteria and fungi. Such sterilization is supported by the absence of large-scale industry on the sun-scorched earth. Nevertheless, unreasonable economic activity of a person even here prepares an ecological catastrophe: the level of groundwater is reduced, formation of failures in soil has begun.
Perhaps, for today the cleanest sea in the world -Weddell. Never heard of this? Still, because there are no crowded beaches, no luxury hotels. For most of the year this sea covers a two-meter thick drifting ice and numerous icebergs. And the conditions for navigation here are such that a rare captain in sound mind and sober memory will risk paving the course here. But German scientists in 1986 took a risk. And found out: the transparency of the local waters is 79 meters. Compare with the theoretical transparency of distilled water (80 meters) and draw conclusions.

Second place in the ranking "the cleanest in the worldsea ​​", perhaps, occupies the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean: its transparency reaches 60 meters, but given the proximity of the USA and Canada, as well as the main transatlantic shipping routes, it is very vulnerable, which is eloquently confirmed by the presence of a large garbage dump from the waste, mainly plastic.

Compared to these two parts of the Worldocean, no other sea in its purity simply does not hold water. It remains to hope that in the XXI century a person will finally put in order the planet on which he lives.