Sea of Crete Sea of Crete The Sea of Crete (, "Kritiko Pelagos") or Cretan Sea, is a sea, part of the Aegean Sea, located in its Southern extremity. The sea stretches to the North of the island of Crete, East of the islands of Kythera and Antikythera, South of the Cyclades, and West of the Dodecanese islands of Rhodes, Karpathos and Kassos. The bounding sea to the West is the Ionian Sea. To the Northwest is the Myrtoan Sea, a subdivision of the Mediterranean Sea that lies between the Cyclades and Peloponnese. To the East-SE is the rest of the Mediterranean Sea,
Mediterranean Sea factors. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 created the first salt-water passage between the Mediterranean and Red Sea. The Red Sea 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 hyper-saline 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 equalised with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and animals from the Red