Mediterranean, Sea

As early as 2500 bce m India indigo was used to dye cloth a deep blue The early Phoenicians discovered that a purple dye of great value Tyrian purple could be extracted from a Mediterranean sea snail The beauty of the color and its scarcity made purple the color of royalty The availability of dyestuffs underwent an abrupt change m 1856 when William Henry Perkin an 18 year old student accidentally discovered a simple way to prepare a deep purple dye which he called mauveme from extracts of coal tar This led to a search for other synthetic dyes and forged a permanent link between industry and chemical research... 

The use of accurate isotope ratio measurement is exemplified here by a method used to determine the temperature of the Mediterranean Sea 10,000 years ago. It is known that the relative solubility of the two isotopic forms of carbon dioxide COj) in sea water depends on temperature... 

Mittel-meer, n. Mediterranean Sea. -meer-fieber, n. Mediterranean fever (undulant fever). 

Lateen sailing vessels are established in the Mediterranean Sea, increasing directional sailing ability. 

Although the relationship of sediment adsorption to water concentration appears to be a controlling feature of shallow water systems such as lakes and coastal shelf water, the open ocean is more likely to contain soluble plutonium which seems to be unaffected by particulate matter. This is particularly evident in two oceanographic studies. Bowen et al have discovered a stratum of plutonium in the North Pacific at about 500m that has not changed depth appreciably from 1973 to 1980. How it arrived at this depth is subject to conjecture but it appears to be soluble plutonium which is not settling(17). Fukai et al have delineated plutonium maxima in the Mediterranean Sea which seem to be due to soluble species(18). Comparison of americium to plutonium ratios in this... 

Mean tar concentrations on the Israeli coast of the Mediterranean Sea ranged from 884 to 4388 g m in 1975-76 (27). Chemical analyses indicated that 76% of the tar on Israeli beaches was weathered crude, 96% of it from Middle Eastern sources (28). Concentrations of tar on the beaches of Lebanon and Turkey appeared to be much lower than those at Alexandria, Egypt and Paphos, Cyprus, as a consequence of the orientation of these beaches relative to a site in the eastern Mediterranean Sea where dumping of oily sludge was permitted (27). 

Mediterranean Sea (75). At the risk of complacency, it can be concluded that this component of the persistent marine debris is reasonably well... 

Evaporite deposition is a much more episodic process and thus difficult to quantify. Because seawater is significantly undersaturated with respect to common evaporitic minerals, like gypsum and halite, evaporites are only formed when restricted circulation develops in an ocean basin in which evaporation exceeds precipitation. A geologically recent example is the Mediterranean Sea of 5-6 Myr ago. At this time excess evaporation exceeded the supply of ocean water through shallow inlet(s) from the Atlantic Ocean. As salinity increased, first CaS04, then NaCl precipitated. Over time, salt deposits 2-3 km thick formed. This thickness represents about 40 desiccations of the entire... 

Counterexamples teach a lesson that these exaggerations of aquatic biological activity are highly idiosyncratic and depend on the fluxes of nutrients, the types of phytoplankton ecosystems that are involved, and - most importantly - the local and regional circulations of the aquatic system. For example, the Mediterranean Sea is landlocked and has many large pollution sources, but the large flux of nutrient-poor ("impoverished") water from the Atlantic... 

Ocean prevents eutrophication. Much more water flows into the Mediterranean Sea than is required to replace evaporation from it. The excess, high salinity water exits Gibraltar below the water flowing in af fhe surface. Nufrients that enter the Mediterranean Sea from pollution sources are utilized by marine phytoplankton that sinks and exits with the outflow. Another example is that estuaries often have lower salinity or even freshwater at the surface with a denser saline layer at the bottom. An estuarine circulation occurs with nutrients being trapped in the saline bottom water. 

Though extremes are part of the normal hydrologic behaviour in Mediterranean-type rivers, a consistent trend of water flow decrease has been described in many of these systems. The Ebro is the largest Iberian river flowing into the Mediterranean Sea. The flow records at its mouth (mean annual runoff 13,408 Mm ) show a decrease of nearly 40% in mean annual flow in the last 50 years. The forces behind these flow decreases are multiple. Higher water withdrawal, climate change and... 

Mediterranean climates are found around the world in addition to the region bordering the Mediterranean Sea. More than half of the Mediterranean-climate regions do occur around the Mediterranean Sea. Other regions with Mediterranean... 

Spills may represent the greatest point source release of methyl parathion to groundwater and surface water. An accidental spill caused by a warehouse fire in Nebraska released methyl parathion to a drainage ditch that emptied into the Missouri River (Kawahara et al. 1967). In another incident, 10 tons of methyl parathion spilled in the Mediterranean Sea near Eg q)t as a result of a collision between two ships (Badawy et al. 1984). 

Badawy MI, El-Dib MA, Aly OA. 1984. Spill of methyl parathion in the Mediterranean Sea A case study at Port-Said, Egypt. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 32 469-477. 

Among the 14 PCB congeners found at die highest concentration in eggs from die Mediterranean Sea and die Atlantic Ocean (Renzoni et al. 1986). These audiors also found numbers 156, 172, and 183. Numbers 172 and 183 were also reported in Borlakoglu et al. (1988). 

Kannan, K., Tanabe, S., and Borrell, A. et al. (1993). Isomer specific analysis and toxic evaluation of PCBs in striped dolphins affected by an epizootic in the western Mediterranean sea. Archives Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 25, 227-233. 

Oz A, G Sabehi, M Koblfzek, R Massana, A Beja (2005) Roseobacter-Vike bacteria in Red and Mediterranean Sea aerobic anoxygenic photosynthetic populations. Appl Environ Microbiol 71 344-353. 

Sprovieri F, Pirrone N, Gardfeldt K, Sommar J. 2003. Atmospheric mercury speciation in the marine boundary layer along 6000 km cruise path over the Mediterranean Sea. Atmos Environ 37(S1) 63-72. 

Antonioli F, Oliverio M (1996) Holocene sea-level rise recorded by a radiocaibon-dated mussel in a submerged speleothem beneath the Mediterranean Sea. Quat Res 45 241-244 Antonioli F, Silenzi S, Frisia S, (2001) Tyrrhenian Holocene palaeoclimate trends from spelean serpulids Fabrizio. (Juat Sci Rev 20 1661-1670... 

Kharkar DP, Thomson J, Turekian KK, Forster WO (1976) Uranium and thorium series nuclides in plankton from the Caribbean. Limnol Oceanogr 21 294-299 Krishnaswami S, Lai D, Somayajulu BLK, Weiss R, Craig H (1976) Large-volume in situ filtration of deep Pacific waters mineralogical and radioisotope studies. Earth Planet Sci Lett 32 420-429 Livingston HD, Cochran JK (1987) Determination of transuranic and thorium isotopes in ocean water in solution and in filterable particles. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 115 299-308 Masque P, Sanchez-Cabeza JA, Braach JM, Palacios E, Canals M (2002) Balance and residence times of °Pb and 4 o in surface waters of the northwestern Mediterranean Sea. Cont Shelf Res 22 2127-2146 Matsumoto E (1975) Th-234-U-238 radioactive disequilibrium in the surface layer of the oceans. Geochim Cosmochim Acta 39 205-212... 

Saliot A, Andril C, Ho R, et al. 1985. Hydrocarbons in the Mediterranean Sea Their occurrence and fate in the sediment and in the water column, as dissolved and associated with small and large size particulates. Journal of Environmental Analytical Chemical 22 25-46. 

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