The Levantine Sea is bordered byTurkey in the north andnorth-east corner,Syria,Lebanon,Palestine andIsrael in the east,Egypt in the south, and theAegean Sea in the northwest. Where it is used as a term its western border is amorphous, hence Mediterranean is more commonly used. The open western border to the next part of the Mediterranean (theLibyan Sea) is defined as a line from headlandRas al-Helal inLibya toGavdos, south of the western half ofCrete.
The largest island in its subset of water isCyprus. The greatest depth of 4,384 m (14,383 ft) is found in the Pliny Trench, about 80 km (50 mi) south of Crete. The Levantine Sea covers 320,000 km2 (120,000 sq mi).
The northern part of the Levantine Sea between Cyprus and Turkey can be further specified as theCilician Sea, a term more arcane. Also in the north are two large bays, theGulf of İskenderun (to the northeast) and theGulf of Antalya (to the northwest).
To the west of the Levantine Deep Marine Basin is theNile Delta Basin, followed by theHerodotus Basin, 130,000 km2 (50,000 sq mi) large and up to 3,200 m (10,500 ft) deep,[5] which – at a possible age of 340 million years – is believed to be the oldest known ocean crust worldwide.[6]
TheSuez Canal was completed in 1869, linking the Levantine Sea to theRed Sea – and mainly for large vessels. The Red Sea sits a little higher than theEastern Mediterranean, so the canal is an intermittenttidal strait discharging water into the Mediterranean. TheBitter Lakes –hypersaline natural lakes, interacting with the canal – were a bar to migration of Red Sea species northward for many decades, but as their salinity has virtually equalized with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plantsand animals from the Red Sea have begun to colonize the eastern Mediterranean. This is theLessepsian migration, afterFerdinand de Lesseps, thechief engineer of the canal.
Most of the river discharge is from theNile. Since theAswan High Dam sits across the river in the 1960s it has facilitated the multiplication of Egyptian agriculture and population. It has reduced, to the sea, the flow offreshwater, mountainous minerals in thesilt, and the distance traveled by silt (before this, borne by floodwater). This makes the sea slightly saltier andnutrient-poorer than before. This has decimated the morningsardine litorine haul in nets but favored many Red Sea species.
^Gacic, Miroslav; Bensi, Manuel (2020-12-10).Ocean Exchange and Circulation. MDPI. p. 7.ISBN978-3-03936-152-6.It is modified flowing eastward, passes the Sicily Channel and the Ionian Sea and enters the easternmost part of the Mediterranean, the Levantine Sea.
Kubin, Elisabeth; Poulain, Pierre-Marie; Mauri, Elena; Menna, Milena; Notarstefano, Giulio. 2019. "Levantine Intermediate and Levantine Deep Water Formation: An Argo Float Study from 2001 to 2017" Water 11, no. 9: 1781.https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091781
Özsoy, E. and H. Güngör (1993). The Northern Levantine Sea Circulation Based on Combined Analysis of CTD and ADCP Data, In: P. Brasseur (editor), Data Assimilation: Tools for Modelling the Ocean in a Global Change Perspective, NATO ASI Series, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Sur, H. İ., Özsoy, E., and Ü. Ünlüata, (1992). Simultaneous Deep and Intermediate Depth Convection in the Northern Levantine Sea, Winter 1992, Ocean.
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