The cleanest sea > Articles

Surely everyone wants to lie on the shores of the cleanest sea in the world and swim in the crystal water. However, this is very difficult, which TravelAsk will tell you about.

The cleanest

The cleanest sea is the Weddell Sea. It is unlikely that this name is familiar to people who like to bask on the coast. However, true "walruses" who are not afraid of cold water, as well as connoisseurs of pristine nature, can find rest here. The thing is that the sea is located off the coast of Antarctica, and for this reason almost everything is covered with a layer of ice.

Probably for this reason it is so clean. Weddell has such clear water that an object that is at a depth of 80 meters will be visible to the naked eye. The chemical composition of its water is close to distilled water. Perhaps in this regard, Weddell can compete only with Lake Baikal.

Dimensions and Depth

The average depth of the Weddell Sea is approximately 3000 meters, and the maximum recorded - 6820 meters. The total area of the reservoir is quite large and amounts to 920 thousand square kilometers.

The sea, in combination, also bears the title of the coldest in the world and, accordingly, one of the most dangerous. The water temperature here in winter drops to -2 degrees. During this period, the surface is covered with ice up to two meters thick.

And then it’s generally dangerous to enter the water area, since a terrible, but at the same time exciting phenomenon, called the “flash-freeze” can be observed in the sea: with it, water and waves freeze literally before our eyes. As a result, a ship trapped in shackles of ice may end up in such a cold trap.

For precisely these reasons, sailors for a long time could not distinguish the outlines of the coast among the boundless glaciers.

A bit of history

The sea was discovered by Scottish navigator James Weddell in 1823. He went hunting in search of seal rookeries.

The second in history, the German traveler and writer Wilhelm Filchner entered this pond almost a hundred years later (in 1911).

Glaciers

The landmarks of the Weddell Sea are the Ronne and Filchner glaciers. They are located on the edge of the south coast. Once every 10-20 years, icebergs break off ice blocks and set off for free navigation across the oceans.

So, for example, in 1998 an iceberg with an area of 7500 square kilometers was formed (this is comparable to the size of all the Canary Islands).

The place where mermaids live

The Weddell Sea is associated with one interesting legend. For more than a hundred years, researchers sometimes see a male mermaid in the waters. However, most likely, these are completely ordinary seals or whales that inhabit the sea.

Weddell washes the shores of Seymour Island. Here is the Antarctic station, which is also called the "entrance to the Atnarctic." The island is very old, its cliffs are about 130 million years old. This is one of the witnesses to the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other living individuals 65 million years ago. Here were discovered the remains of the ancient inhabitants of the planet: a giant penguin two meters tall and weighing about 135 kilograms, a four-meter clam, a sea turtle the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Second and third place

In second place for cleanliness is the Sargassovo Sea, which has two amazing properties. Firstly, part of it is covered with special algae, which externally can be mistaken for land. But this does not harm the purity of the water. Its second feature is that the borders of the sea are indicated by currents, and not by land (in fact, they clean the water here).

The Dead Sea closes the three leaders, in which life is impossible due to the large abundance of salt. Well, if we talk about the cleanest sea in which you can swim, then this is the Red Sea.

It has crystal clear water, and not a single river flows into it (and rivers usually bring silt with them), this preserves its purity. And the Red Sea is the warmest, you can read more about this in detail. here.