Levantine Sea to be the oldest known ocean crust worldwide. The Suez Canal was completed in 1869, linking the Levantine Sea to the Red Sea. The Red Sea's level is higher than the Eastern Mediterranean, so the canal serves as a tidal strait that pours Red Sea water into the Mediterranean. The Bitter Lakes, which are hypersaline natural lakes that form part of the canal, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalized with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and
Mediterranean Sea sea in two main subregions: the Western Mediterranean, with an area of about 850 thousand km (330 thousand mi); and the Eastern Mediterranean, of about 1.65 million km (640 thousand mi). A characteristic of the coastal Mediterranean are submarine karst springs or s, which discharge pressurised groundwater into the coastal seawater from below the surface; the discharge water is usually fresh, and sometimes may be thermal. The Mediterranean basin and sea system was established by the ancient African-Arabian continent colliding with the Eurasian continent. As Africa-Arabia drifted northward, it closed over the ancient Tethys Ocean which had earlier separated the