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Red Sea
A young ocean in the making, splitting Africa from Arabia
The Red Sea is a long, narrow gash of brilliant blue water prying Africa away from the Arabian Peninsula. It is one of the saltiest and warmest seas on Earth, fringed by some of the most spectacular coral reefs in the world and almost devoid of rivers. Geologists regard it not merely as a sea but as an ocean being born: the same rifting that opened the Atlantic is here in its infancy, slowly tearing the continents apart along a line that will one day be a major ocean.
Stretching some 2,250 kilometres from the Gulf of Suez to the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Red Sea covers about 438,000 square kilometres and reaches roughly 2,730 metres in its central Suakin Trough. Along its axis, hot brine pools laden with metals seep from the spreading rift floor. With virtually no freshwater inflow and intense evaporation under the desert sun, its salinity is extreme, yet its warm, clear, nutrient-poor waters support exceptional reef diversity. The name may derive from seasonal blooms of reddish cyanobacteria.
Few waters have carried more trade or more legend. Ancient Egyptians launched expeditions to the land of Punt from its shores — Roman and Arab merchants moved spices and incense through it — and its northern tip is bound to the Exodus narrative of a parting sea. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 turned it into the maritime spine between Europe and Asia, and today a vast share of world commerce threads the Bab-el-Mandeb, a chokepoint whose security shapes global shipping.