The world’s northernmost tropical sea is a rifting inlet
The Red Sea separates Arabia from Africa as an Indian Ocean inlet via Bab-el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden, with Sinai, Aqaba, and Suez—and the canal—at its north. Roughly 438,000 square kilometres, about 2,250 kilometres long and 355 wide at most, it averages 490 metres deep and hits 2,730 in the Suakin Trough.
About forty percent of the sea is shallower than 100 metres and a quarter shallower than 50, so broad shelves host abundant life: more than 1,000 invertebrate species and around 200 kinds of hard and soft coral. It is the most northerly tropical sea on Earth, and the Red Sea Rift runs beneath it.
The International Hydrographic Organization closes the sea in the north at the mouths of the Gulf of Suez, near Ràs Muhammed and Shadwan Island, and the Gulf of Aqaba, near Tiran Island. The southern boundary stretches from Husn Murad to Ras Siyyan. Area totals count the Hala’ib Triangle coast twice, since Sudan and Egypt both claim it.
English Red Sea translates the Greek Erythrà Thálassa, which gave Europeans the Erythraean Sea; Romans said Mare Rubrum, Sinus Arabicus or Pontus Herculis, and later Western mapmakers used Mare Mecca. Arabic calls it al-Baḥr al-Aḥmar or, in medieval times, Baḥr al-Qulzum, the Sea of Clysma, and Somali speakers say Badda Cas. The colour may come from seasonal surface blooms of the reddish alga Trichodesmium erythraeum, though some scholars think red once meant south, as black may have meant north for the Black Sea. The Biblical Yam Suph, Sea of Reeds, belongs to the story of the Israelites’ crossing.
Ancient Egyptians were the first known explorers, sailing its length to reach the land of Punt. One such voyage took place around 2500 BCE and another, under Hatshepsut, around 1500 BCE.
Source: Red Sea
