US drone: The hidden world beneath the Black Sea - BBC News

The race is on to recover the wreckage of the American

drone

that crashed in the Black Sea, but the wreckage may have sunk up to 1,500 meters below the surface and this got me thinking about what else could be lurking at the bottom of the Black Sea. . How deep is the Black Sea? It is estimated to have a maximum depth of approximately 7,000 feet, which is roughly equivalent to six Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other, and the

world

down there is quite extraordinary. This is due to two of the main sources from which the Black Sea gets its water, fresh water is supplied by the numerous rivers that pass through Eastern Europe, while denser salt water flows through the Bosphorus Strait.

The higher density of salt water creates stratification, meaning the two layers do not mix with the layer above. It has less salt and is rich in oxygen, so it can support a lot of life, while the bottom layer is the opposite, meaning it contains little or no oxygen and is instead rich in toxic hydrogen sulfide, which which is not pleasant. It is in this anoxic layer where the Black Sea hides something. of its greatest treasures and it is precisely the absence of oxygen that makes it possible by slowing down the decomposition process of organic materials such as wood.

The Black Sea Maritime Archeology Project announced in 2018 that it had discovered possibly the

world

's oldest intact shipwreck, from the year 2400. An ancient Greek cargo ship was discovered just over a mile below the surface in incredible condition. This was one of 65 shipwrecks discovered during the four-year project in the Black Sea and there are not only ancient ships down there, but also an entire underwater river in 2010. University of Leeds discovered strange currents of water flowing along along the seafloor, dense, salty water that flows from the Bosphorus sinkholes to the seafloor, where it creates a channel just as rivers do on land;

There are even rapids and waterfalls on the surface. It will be the sixth largest river in the world in terms of the volume of water flowing through it, so as Russia continues its search for the remains of the American

drone

, there is a good chance they will discover something they had not expected.