he earliest known exploration of the Red Sea was conducted by ancient Egyptians, as they

attempted to establish commercial routes to Punt. One such expedition took place around 2500 BC,
and another around 1500 BC (by Hatshepsut). Both involved long voyages down the Red
Sea.[12] Historically, scholars argued whether these trips were possible.[13] The biblical Book of
Exodus tells the account of the Israelites' crossing of a body of water, which the Hebrew text
calls Yam Suph (Hebrew: ‫)יַם סּוף‬. Yam Suph was traditionally identified as the Red Sea.
Rabbi Saadia Gaon (882‒942), in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, identifies the
crossing place of the Red Sea as Baḥar al-Qulzum, meaning the Gulf of Suez.[14]

Settlements and commercial centers in the vicinity of the Red Sea involved in the spice trade, as described in
the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

In the 6th century BC, Darius the Great of Persia sent reconnaissance missions to the Red Sea,
improving and extending navigation by locating many hazardous rocks and currents. A canal was
built between the Nile and the northern end of the Red Sea at Suez. In the late 4th century
BC, Alexander the Great sent Greek naval expeditions down the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Greek navigators continued to explore and compile data on the Red Sea. Agatharchides collected
information about the sea in the 2nd century BC. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea ("Periplus of
the Red Sea"), a Greek periplus written by an unknown author around the 1st century AD, contains a
detailed description of the Red Sea's ports and sea routes.[15] The Periplus also describes
how Hippalus first discovered the direct route from the Red Sea to India.
The Red Sea was favored for Roman trade with India starting with the reign of Augustus, when
the Roman Empire gained control over the Mediterranean, Egypt, and the northern Red Sea. The
route had been used by previous states but grew in the volume of traffic under the Romans. From
Indian ports goods from China were introduced to the Roman world. Contact between Rome and
China depended on the Red Sea, but the route was broken by the Aksumite Empire around the 3rd
century AD.[16]

Middle Ages and modern era[edit]

During the Middle Ages, the Red Sea was an important part of the spice trade route. In 1513, trying
to secure that channel to Portugal, Afonso de Albuquerque laid siege to Aden[17] but was forced to
retreat. They cruised the Red Sea inside the Bab al-Mandab, as the first European fleet to have
sailed these waters.
In 1798, France ordered General Napoleon to invade Egypt and take control of the Red Sea.
Although he failed in his mission, the engineer Jean-Baptiste Lepère, who took part in it, revitalised
the plan for a canal which had been envisaged during the reign of the Pharaohs. Several canals
were built in ancient times from the Nile to the Red Sea along or near the line of the present Sweet
Water Canal, but none lasted for long. The Suez Canal was opened in November 1869. At the time,
the British, French, and Italians shared the trading posts but these were gradually dismantled
following the First World War. After the Second World War, the Americans and Soviets exerted their
influence whilst the volume of oil tanker traffic intensified. However, the Six-Day War culminated in
the closure of the Suez Canal from 1967 to 1975. Today, in spite of patrols by the major maritime
fleets in the waters of the Red Sea, the Suez Canal has never recovered its supremacy over the
Cape route, which is believed to be less vulnerable to piracy.

Oceanography[edit]

Annotated view of the Nile and Red Sea, with a dust storm[18]

The Red Sea is between arid land, desert and semi-desert. Reef systems are better developed
along the Red Sea mainly because of its greater depths and an efficient water circulation pattern.
The Red Sea water mass-exchanges its water with the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean via the Gulf of
Aden. These physical factors reduce the effect of high salinity caused by evaporation in the north
and relatively hot water in the south.[citation needed]
The climate of the Red Sea is the result of two monsoon seasons; a northeasterly monsoon and a
southwesterly monsoon. Monsoon winds occur because of differential heating between the land and
the sea. Very high surface temperatures and high salinities make this one of the warmest and
saltiest bodies of seawater in the world. The average surface water temperature of the Red Sea
during the summer is about 26 °C (79 °F) in the north and 30 °C (86 °F) in the south, with only about
2 °C (3.6 °F) variation during the winter months. The overall average water temperature is 22 °C
(72 °F). Temperature and visibility remain good to around 200 m (656 ft). The sea is known for its
strong winds and unpredictable local currents.[citation needed]
The rainfall over the Red Sea and its coasts is extremely low, averaging 0.06 m (2.36 in) per year.
The rain is mostly short showers, often with thunderstorms and occasionally with dust storms. The
scarcity of rainfall and no major source of fresh water to the Red Sea result in excess evaporation as
high as 205 cm (81 in) per year and high salinity with minimal seasonal variation. A recent
underwater expedition to the Red Sea offshore from Sudan and Eritrea[19] found surface water
temperatures 28 °C (82 °F) in winter and up to 34 °C (93 °F) in the summer, but despite that extreme
heat the coral was healthy with much fish life with very little sign of coral bleaching, with only 9%
infected by Thalassomonas loyana, the 'white plague' agent. Favia favus coral there harbours a
virus, BA3, which kills T. loyana.[20] Plans are afoot to use samples of these corals' apparently heat-
adapted commensal algae to salvage bleached coral elsewhere.[citation needed]
Salinity[edit]
The Red Sea is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world, owing to high
evaporation. Salinity ranges from between ~36 ‰ in the southern part because of the effect of
the Gulf of Aden water and 41 ‰ in the northern part, owing mainly to the Gulf of Suez water and the
high evaporation. The average salinity is 40 ‰. (Average salinity for the world's seawater is ~35 ‰
on the Practical Salinity Scale, or PSU; that translates to 3.5% of actual dissolved salts.)[citation needed]
The salinity of the Red Sea is greater than the world average, by approximately 5‰. This is due to
several factors:[citation needed]

1. High rate of evaporation and very little precipitation.

2. Lack of significant rivers or streams draining into the sea.
3. Limited connection with the Indian Ocean, which has lower water salinity.
Tidal range[edit]
In general tide ranges between 0.6 m (2.0 ft) in the north, near the mouth of the Gulf of Suez and
0.9 m (3.0 ft) in the south near the Gulf of Aden but it fluctuates between 0.20 m (0.66 ft) and 0.30 m
(0.98 ft) away from the nodal point. The central Red Sea (Jeddah area) is therefore almost tideless,
and as such the annual water level changes are more significant. Because of the small tidal range
the water during high tide inundates the coastal sabkhas as a thin sheet of water up to a few
hundred metres rather than flooding the sabkhasthrough a network of channels. However, south of
Jeddah in the Shoiaba area the water from the lagoon may cover the adjoining sabkhas as far as
3 km (2 mi), whereas, north of Jeddah in the Al-Kharrar area the sabkhas are covered by a thin
sheet of water as far as 2 km (1.2 mi). The prevailing north and northeast winds influence the
movement of water in the coastal inlets to the adjacent sabkhas, especially during storms. Winter
mean sea level is 0.5 m (1.6 ft) higher than in summer. Tidal velocities passing through constrictions
caused by reefs, sand bars and low islands commonly exceed 1–2 m/s (3–6.5 ft/s). Coral reefs in the
Red Sea are near Egypt, Eritrea, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.[citation needed]

Current[edit]
Detailed information regarding current data is lacking, partially because the currents are weak and
both spatially and temporally variable. The variation of temporal and spatial currents is as low as
0.5 m (1.6 ft) and are governed all by wind. During the summer, NW winds drive surface water south
for about four months at a velocity of 15–20 cm/s (6–8 in/s), whereas in winter the flow is reversed
resulting in the inflow of water from the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea. The net value of the latter
predominates, resulting in an overall drift to the north end of the Red Sea. Generally, the velocity of
the tidal current is between 50–60 cm/s (20–23.6 in/s) with a maximum of 1 m/s (3.3 ft/s) at the
mouth of the al-Kharrar Lagoon. However, the range of the north-northeast current along the Saudi
coast is 8–29 cm/s (3–11.4 in/s).[citation needed]

Wind regime[edit]
The north part of the Red Sea is dominated by persistent north-west winds, with speeds ranging
between 7 km/h (4.3 mph) and 12 km/h (7.5 mph). The rest of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are
subjected to regular and seasonally reversible winds. The wind regime is characterized by seasonal
and regional variations in speed and direction with average speed generally increasing
northward.[citation needed]
Wind is the driving force in the Red Sea to transport material as suspension or as bedload. Wind-
induced currents play an important role in the Red Sea in resuspending bottom sediments and
transferring materials from sites of dumping to sites of burial in quiescent environment of deposition.
Wind-generated current measurement is therefore important in order to determine the sediment
dispersal pattern and its role in the erosion and accretion of the coastal rock exposure and the
submerged coral beds.[citation needed]

Geology[edit]

Dust storm over the Red Sea

The Red Sea was formed by the Arabian peninsula being split from the Horn of Africa by movement
of the Red Sea Rift. This split started in the Eocene and accelerated during the Oligocene. The sea
is still widening (in 2005, following a three-week period of tectonic activity it had grown by 8m),[21] and
it is considered that it will become an ocean in time (as proposed in the model of John Tuzo Wilson).
In 1949, a deep water survey reported anomalously hot brines in the central portion of the Red Sea.
Later work in the 1960s confirmed the presence of hot, 60 °C (140 °F), saline brines and associated
metalliferous muds. The hot solutions were emanating from an active subseafloor rift. Lake Asal in
Djibouti is eligible as an experimental site to study the evolution of the deep hot brines of the Red
Sea.[22] Indeed, by observing the strontium isotope composition of the Red Sea brines, it is easy to
deduce how these salt waters found at the bottom of the Red Sea could have evolved in a similar
way to Lake Asal, which ideally represents their compositional extreme.[22] The high salinity of the
waters was not hospitable to living organisms.[23]
Sometime during the Tertiary period, the Bab el Mandeb closed and the Red Sea evaporated to an
empty hot dry salt-floored sink. Effects causing this would have been:

 A "race" between the Red Sea widening and Perim Island erupting filling the Bab el Mandeb
with lava.
 The lowering of world sea level during the Ice Ages because of much water being locked up in
the ice caps.
A number of volcanic islands rise from the center of the sea. Most are dormant. However, in
2007, Jabal al-Tair island in the Bab el Mandeb strait erupted violently. Two new islands were
formed in 2011 and 2013 in the Zubair Archipelago, a small chain of islands owned by Yemen. The
first island, Sholan Island, emerged in an eruption in December 2011, the second island, Jadid,
emerged in September 2013.[24][25][26]
The Durwara 2 Field was discovered in 1963, while the Suakin 1 Field and the Bashayer 1A Field
were discovered in 1976, on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea. The Barqan Field was discovered in
1969, and the Midyan Field in 1992, both within the Midyan Basin on the Saudi Arabian side of the
Red Sea. The 20 m thick Middle Miocene Maqna Formation is an oil source rock in the basin. Oil
seeps occur near the Farasan Islands, the Dahlak Archipelago, along the coast of Eritrea, and in the
southeastern Red Sea along the coasts of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.[27]