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The Black Sea (also known as the Euxine Sea) is an inland sea between southeastern Europe and Asia Minor. It is connected to the Mediterranean Sea by the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara, and to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch.
There is a net inflow of seawater through the Bosporus, 200 km³ per year. There is an inflow of freshwater from the surrounding areas, especially central and middle-eastern Europe, totalling 320 km³ per year. The most important river entering the Black Sea is the Danube. The Black Sea has an area of 422,000 km² and a maximum depth of 2210 m.
Countries bordering on the Black Sea are Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, UkraineUkraine Ukrayina in Ukrainian; in Russian) is a republic in eastern Europe which borders the Black Sea to the south, the Russian Federation to the east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west and Romania and Moldova to the west and, RussiaThe Russian Federation ( Russian: , transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija , or Russia (Russian: , transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija , is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. With, GeorgiaGeorgia ( Sakartvelo in Georgian), known from 1990 to 1995 as the Republic of Georgia is a country to the east of the Black Sea in the south Caucasus. A former republic of the Soviet Union, it shares borders with Russia in the north and Turkey, Armenia, A. The CrimeaThe Crimea (officially Autonomous Republic of Crimea Ukrainian transliteration: Avtonomna Respublika Krym Ukrainian: Russian: is a peninsula and an autonomous republic of Ukraine on the northern coast of the Black Sea. It was called Tauric or Scythian Che is an Autonomous Republic of Ukraine.
Important cities along the coast include: IstanbulMunicipality's Logo Istanbul ( Turkish spelling: İstanbul) is the largest city in Turkey. Until 1930 this city was commonly known by its original Greek name Constantinople by westerners; some writings named it Stambul especially in the 19th century. (formerly ConstantinopleConstantinople (Roman name: Constantinopolis; Greek: Konstantinoupolis or ) is the former name of the city of Istanbul in Turkey. Its original name was Byzantium ( Greek: Byzantion or Bυζαντιο&nu pronounced roughly B and ByzantiumByzantium was the original name of the modern city of Istanbul. Byzantium was originally settled by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzantas. The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization of the original Greek name Byzantion .), BurgasBurgas or Bourgas, Bulgarian: ) is the second largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. It is also the fourth largest city in the country, following Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna. Burgas is an industrial and tourist center. Burgas International Airport is, Varna, Constanta, Yalta, Odessa, Sevastopol, Batumi, Trabzon, Samsun, Zonguldak.
The Black Sea is the largest anoxic, or oxygen-free, marine system. This is a result of the great depth of the sea and the relatively low salinity (and therefore density) of the water flowing into it from rivers and the Mediterranean; freshwater and seawater mixing is limited to the uppermost 100 to 150 m, with the water below this interface (called the pycnocline ) being exchanged only once every thousand years. There is therefore no significant gas exchange with the surface, and as a result decaying organic matter in the sediment consumes any available oxygen. In these anoxic conditions some extremophile microorganisms are able to use sulfate (SO42−) for oxidation of organic material, producing hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide. This mix is extremely toxic (a lungful would be fatal to a human), resulting in a sea that has almost all of its ecology living in that top layer down to a depth of approximately 180 m (600 ft). The relative lack of micro-organisms and oxygen has allowed deep-sea expeditions to recover ancient (on the order of thousands of years) human artifacts, such as boat hulls and the remains of settlements.
Large amounts of organic material reach the bottom of the sea and accumulate in the sediments in concentrations of up to 20%. These kinds of sediments are called sapropel .
While it is agreed that the Black Sea has been a sweetwater lake with a considerably lower level during the last glaciation, its postglacial development into a marine sea is still a subject of intensive study and debate. There are catastrophic scenarios such as put forward by Ryan and Pitman as well as models emphasizing a more gradual transition to saline conditions and transgression in the Black Sea. They are based on different theories about the level the sweetwater lake had reached by the time the Mediterranean Sea was high enough to flow over the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus.
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