Terrible Secrets of the Sea Without Shores. What are the sailors silent about?

Sargasso Sea– the only one of its kind on planet Earth. This is a sea without shores.

Can this really happen?

Maybe. Although we are, of course, accustomed to something different. All seas have shores, sea ​​water limited to land. Surf, storms, storms, ebbs and flows... The shores in all this sea ​​life invariably participate.

The Sargasso Sea is located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Its waters are limited by the powerful Atlantic currents. In the north it is the North Atlantic, in the south it is the North Trade Wind, the Gulf Stream flows from the west, and in the east there is the Canary Current. As a result, the water in the Sargasso Sea is mainly limited by currents. The area y of the sea varies depending on the position of the sea currents surrounding it, ranging from 6 to 7 million square kilometers. Big sea!

Who discovered the Sargasso Sea?

They say that ancient sailors knew about the Sargasso Sea. Still, Christopher Columbus should be considered its discoverer. In 1492, on his way to America (he thought to India), he found himself in the middle of the ocean in strange algae that were on the surface of the water. I had to maneuver, choosing a path in the sleeves clean water. The algae stayed on the surface because they were surrounded by air bubbles. Because of this, they looked like small grapes, which in Spanish are called sargazo. So much for the name of the sea!

In fact, the sight of the ocean surface overgrown with algae is impressive. And some are horrified. Sailors in general are superstitious people. Seeing seemingly still waters covered with “islands” of algae, they came up with many stories. The ships became entangled in algae and could not move further, as if whirlpools appeared in the stagnant waters, sucking the ships, huge fish swam to the surface and overturned the ships... Fear and horror, horror and fear!

But what really?

Of course, scientists biologists and hydrologists have explored the Sargasso Sea, but no fear or, worse than that, they didn’t find any horror in him. The algae of the Sargasso Sea belong to special type Sargassum natans. They reproduce by fragmentation. What does this mean? This means that any piece can live and function independently, reproducing itself and spreading across the surface of warm water. By the way, the water is very warm because it is not too mobile. Therefore in the waters Sargasso Sea plankton lives. Very small crabs and shrimp live here. Eels swim to the warm waters of the Sargasso Sea to spawn from both American and European shores. And at the end of their lives, eels return to their place of birth and die here, in the Sargasso Sea.

Fish also live among the sargassum. One of the most interesting among them is the sea clown. It has the same color as algae, so it is not noticeable among them. The clown sea is about 20 centimeters in size. Why is he called a clown? Because it scares away the enemy by swallowing water, stretching and turning into a ball. By the way, because of this, he can swallow larger animals.

Other fish species also lay eggs in the Sargasso Sea. Why? Because there are no predators in these waters.

Large expanses of the Atlantic Ocean, closer to the mainland North America, between 20 and 40 gr. With. w. have the shape of a giant ellipse of light green color. This is a one-of-a-kind miracle of nature - the Sargasso Sea, the shores of which are not land, as usual, but large ocean currents: in the west and north - the North Atlantic, in the east - the Canary Sea, in the south - the Trade Wind, moving in a circular clockwise direction.

Acting as a kind of watershed or dam, the currents prevent the surface waters of the Sargasso Sea from mixing with the colder waters of the North Atlantic. But unlike ordinary land shores that limit the seas, these water “shores”, due to the inconstancy of sea currents in different times years undergo significant movements, that is, they “travel.” Therefore, the area of ​​the Sargasso Sea varies from 8.5 to 4 million square meters. km.

This led to the accumulation of plants called Sargassum algae on the surface of the ocean. These large, up to two meters, yellow-brown plants belong to brown algae, but, unlike their relatives, they are able to live and reproduce afloat, without attaching to anything. First Portuguese sailors They called them “sargasso” because the air bubbles that allow the algae to move and float on the water are similar to a grape variety common in Portugal.

The Sargasso Sea is a unique world inhabited by many species of worms, mollusks, crabs and fish. Very peculiar water striders live there. Some of them are found nowhere else. Many of these inhabitants of the open ocean are very poor swimmers or do not know how to swim at all. But this is not a mandatory requirement for life. Why swim when there are thickets all around that you can walk through?

The unusual nature of the Sargasso Sea has given rise to many legends. The most tenacious one talks about the existence of such accumulations of algae there that ships get stuck in them and die. The legend is still repeated from time to time, despite the fact that sailors never complain about the occurrence of any complications when crossing the sea.

However, sailing ships of past centuries actually got stuck in the center of the Sargasso Sea. But not because of the algae, but because of the eternal calms. Sometimes I had to stand for an indefinitely long time. Galleon crews were forced to throw riding horses overboard to save supplies drinking water. Unlucky horses could survive for months by staying afloat and eating algae. Sailors from passing ships often saw strange creatures floundering in a tangle of algae with maddened horse snoring, rotting alive under the scorching sun. That’s why the Sargasso Sea in past centuries was also called “horse latitudes.”

Sargasso Sea

Without shores and without wind

Sargasso is the most mysterious of all seas: it has neither shores nor a permanent area, but the water transparency of this sea without shores is one of the highest in the world. In the area of ​​the Sargasso Sea, the bottom is visible down to 60 m depth! And look in this area of ​​the Atlantic Ocean, limited by four circular ocean currents- The Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic, the Canary and the North Trade Winds, there is something to be done.

The discovery of the Sargasso Sea is credited to Christopher Columbus himself, who described in detail the places where he and his crew were stranded for two long weeks in the heat of September 1492. Columbus left a colorful account of this deceptively calm region of the Bermuda Triangle, where the sailors gradually became overcome by despair at the sight of... how the sails drooped helplessly. Rowing in this place is not possible due to a thick layer of algae wrapping around the oars.

Due to the location of the Sargasso Sea in an area of ​​constantly elevated atmospheric pressure The weather here is mostly calm. However, the lack of wind is not always a plus. Sailing ships who found themselves in a “sea without shores” found themselves immobilized for many weeks, if not months. The team, which was quickly running out of food supplies and fresh water, was dying. Especially in the Sargasso Sea area, horses transported from Europe to America died a lot. The corpses of unfortunate animals were thrown into the water, which is why the sea received the nickname “horse latitudes” in sailor’s jargon.

In quiet and warm waters The Sargasso Sea, whose temperature never drops below 18 °C, is where life flourishes: it is here that the largest reserves of floating brown algae - sargassum - are concentrated, which move freely in the water column due to the presence of small air bubbles in them.

Sargassy is a real hospitable home for many fish, sea ​​turtles, mollusks, sea anemones and crustaceans. There are especially many Atlantic eels here, which annually gather in huge numbers in the warm waters of the sea to give rise to a new life. Eels strive to get here from the rivers of America and Europe, sometimes overcoming completely unimaginable distances, up to 6000 km!

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Sargasso Sea. The coordinates of this most interesting and dangerous area of ​​the Atlantic are 22-36 degrees northern latitude and 32-64 degrees west longitude. The sea area is 7 million square meters. kilometers. The climate in terms of temperature is close to tropical; in summer the temperature on the surface of the water is about 30 degrees Celsius, and in winter it is plus 23 degrees. The depth of the Sargasso Sea is a little more than 6 thousand meters. Moreover, the temperature of water at depth differs from the world ocean by two times; the Sargasso Sea is very warm.

Usually seas have shores, but Sargasso does not. The boundaries of its water area are considered to be the Atlantic currents, there are only four of them: the Gulf Stream in the west, the North Atlantic in the north, the Canary in the east, and the Trade Wind in the south. All these currents are approximately equal in power; as a result of their circular closed interaction, a vast anticyclone zone is created, in which there are never storms; this zone is the Sargasso Sea. It would seem that there is nothing wrong with the fact that the Atlantic Ocean in some part has become a kind of quiet harbor in which ships can take shelter from bad weather and wait out the storm.

But in the Sargasso Sea it is too calm, there is always complete calm and there is not a breeze. Swimming into this calm, where the flame of a burning candle does not move and the air is still, is dangerous, you can stay there forever. A light breeze occurs very rarely in the Sargasso Sea and is so weak that it cannot fill the sails of a ship. Therefore, in those distant times, when there were no mechanical engines yet, and the ships were all sail-powered, falling into the vast Sargasso Sea, caravels, corvettes, frigates, brigantines became helpless and died after several months of waiting for a fair wind.

The Gulf Stream and other currents not only created the wide Sargasso Sea, but also tried to make it decorative. It is in this area of ​​the Atlantic Ocean, at the bottom, that sargassum grows, from which, in fact, the name of the sea comes - Sargasso. These algae are strikingly different from all others

Sargassum is not a band algae, but a bush-like algae. It has rhizomes, branches, fruits and leaves, like an ordinary bush that grows on land. Sargasso has a short life at the bottom of the ocean; its bush separates from the rhizome and floats to the surface, decorating the Sargasso Sea. Nature has endowed the plant with the ability to reproduce numerous air bubbles at the tips of the branches, which help the algae to float and confidently float on the water.

Tireless currents collect bushes in the middle of the sea, and there the algae spread in a continuous carpet, frightening sailors and sea animals with their unusual appearance. Although the sargassum does not pose any danger to ships - although reluctantly, they disperse under the bowsprit of a moving ship, closing again behind the stern. Sargassum does not carry organic life, it is algae already dead, after rising to the surface. Their mass is used by small crustaceans to build their simple houses. Mollusks also adapt to harsh conditions. There is still life in the deadly Sargasso Sea, and it continues.

It turns out that defining such a seemingly simple concept as the sea is not at all easy. There is no generally accepted definition, which means there is no generally accepted classification of seas either.

The sea is usually defined as a large part of the world's oceans, which in some ways differs from this ocean itself. The sea has its own special climatic, hydrological and meteorological regime due to the fact that for some reason the free exchange of water between the sea and the “open” ocean slows down. Most often, this is due to the configuration of the seashore or the rise of the underwater relief to the surface of the water. Thus, the Sea of ​​Azov is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the Black and Mediterranean Sea, but the salinity of the water here and the fauna and flora are significantly different from those in the ocean. The border between Aegean Sea and Mediterranean are defined very conditionally along the line connecting the islands of Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes. It is difficult to determine the difference between these seas if you are not an expert.

And immediately everyone who has studied geography remembers the seas that are not connected to the ocean: the Caspian, the Aral, the Dead... They do not fit the above definition, but are considered seas. But for some reason neither Baikal nor Lake Kinneret, located very close to the Dead Sea, are considered such.

Another exception to the seemingly strict definition is a sea without shores. Yes, there is such a thing. It is called the Sargasso Sea and is located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of America. At its northwestern tip are Bermuda. Christopher Columbus discovered it on his voyage, before reaching the shores of America. At some point, the sea water on which his caravels floated became motionless and became covered with many plants. In addition, at that moment the wind disappeared. It seemed to the sailors that these plants clung to the sides of their boats and did not allow them to sail further. "We are dead!" - was the first thought. In addition, at night the sailors saw a large starfall in the sky, which was also interpreted as a sign of trouble. God knows what could have happened next if Columbus had not ordered the oars to get away from both the calm and the strange water covered with algae. A few days later the wind blew and a current appeared. Soon the sailor on watch saw the islands. This marked the end of a glorious journey that, without exaggeration, changed the course of world history.

Columbus, of course, marked it on the map strange place. But it was studied later. And the sea received its name later. It was named Sargasso after the algae that covered the entire water surface here. Portuguese sailors called these algae "sargassum", "small grapes".

But why does this sea exist without shores? What limits him from others? ocean waters? What makes the waters of the Sargasso Sea different from other waters of the Atlantic Ocean?

The answer is: underwater currents. The Sargasso Sea area is limited on all sides Atlantic currents. In the west it is - warm current Gulf Stream, in the north - North Atlantic Current. In the east, the waters of the Sargasso Sea are limited by the Canary Current, and in the south by the North Trade Wind Current. It was this latter that urged Columbus's ships at the beginning of his journey through open ocean. In general, these four currents form a circular movement of ocean waters in a clockwise direction.

As always, if water begins to move in a circle, a place is formed in the center where it is motionless. This is the Sargasso Sea. It is precisely because the surface layer of water here is motionless that the Sargas rise to the surface and form a huge “carpet”. This "carpet" is visible even from space. Space stations and satellites have repeatedly photographed the surface of the Sargasso Sea for biological research.

Unfortunately, they photographed him for other purposes as well. The fact is that the circular current, as if forming the “shores” of the Sargasso Sea, sucks in any kind of easy debris floating on the surface of the Atlantic in tropical latitudes. Almost one hundred percent of this garbage consists of plastic bottles and boxes. The laws of nature cannot be deceived - all the garbage, swirling in a circular current, slowing down its movement, gradually moves towards the center of the Sargasso Sea, where, stopping, it forms huge spots plastic waste. Because the