Mediterranean Sea more like the Red Sea and worsening the impact of the invasive species. Invasive species have become a major component of the Mediterranean ecosystem and have serious impacts on the Mediterranean ecology, endangering many local and endemic Mediterranean species. A first look at some groups of exotic species show that more than 70% of the non-indigenous decapods and about 63% of the exotic fishes occurring in the Mediterranean are of Indo Pacific origin, introduced into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. This makes the Canal as the first pathway of arrival of "alien" species into the Mediterranean. The impacts of
Mediterranean Sea Middle Sea'. In Islamic and older Arabic literature, it was "Baḥr al-Rūm(ī)" ( or }) 'the Sea of the Romans' or 'the Roman Sea'. At first, that name referred to only the Eastern Mediterranean, but it was later extended to the whole Mediterranean. Other Arabic names were "Baḥr al-šām(ī)" () 'the Sea of Syria' and "Baḥr al-Maghrib" () 'the Sea of the West'. In Turkish, it is the "Akdeniz" 'the White Sea'; in Ottoman, ﺁق دكيز, which sometimes means only the Aegean Sea. The origin of the name is not clear, as it is not known in earlier Greek, Byzantine