Which River Is Under the Sea?

This is the question that has been going on in the thoughts of people ever since the news of finding of a ‘river under sea’ started doing the rounds all over the place. As per the news, a group of divers have discovered an undersea river. It is filled with trees and leaves flowing on the seabed. This undersea river has been found in Mexico, under the sea of Mexico. It’s been given the name of ‘Cenote Angelita’.

However, it is more famously called the river in the sea.

According to Anatoly Beloshchin and his cohort of divers who were pioneer ones to uncover this phenomenon, this river under water is a whole river like any conventional one. It moves as much as 115 feet deep at some places. The river has both fresh water and salty water at varying depths. Other than this single undersea river, other instances of river under water have been found by scientists all over the world.

River under the Sea found

Another case of the river under the sea was uncovered by the team of Dr. Dan Parson and others from the British University of Leeds in the Black Sea. This undersea river is thought to be flowing with enough strength to count it as the sixth biggest river in the world. It is huge when we look to its counterparts on the land. Believed to be over a hundred feet deep in some places. The mighty river can flow at a rate of four miles every hour. Also, roughly 22,000 cubic meters of water moving through this particular channel.

These findings have made scientists all over the globe to consider the possibility of existence of many such rivers under sea. Also, on ocean beds. What was earlier thought of as a miracle or maybe an occurance of paranormal activity has now scientific reasons to make this process clearer. This makes one thing certain- rivers below the sea can exist scientifically.

The reason for making of such rivers can be varied. At times it stems from the bigger part of the sea below. Also, flows and carries a lot of sediments. This convert it into a complete river such as body of its own. The river in sea found by Dr. Parson and his group is believed to have been formed as a consequence of this phenomenon. It is from the salty water of Mediterranean Sea into the Black sea. This is via the Bosphorus Strait. This undersea river makes a channel of its own which can mpve as much as 0.6 miles wide. The sediments moved by this flow result in a river bed making a separate structure.

Many cultures have river-related myths

Even in Mexico, there is the Cenote Angelita, a very famous sea river. However, scientists think of a separate phenomenon for this finding. This undersea river is thought to actually be a bed of heavy layers of hydrogen sulphide gas. It is made by bacteria from the seabed upon the decomposition of organic matter. This is not anything like a real river in many ways. Because this is just a thick layer of bad-smelling gas that curves and changes its path like a river would. Also, the illusion it creates is of a river, even with riverbanks and foliage. This is good to classify it as an undersea river, in the opinion of a lot of scientists.

After the news of such rivers undersea, people all over the world have been looking for more such cases. Many have been found and even more maybe discovered. Also, this makes one thing clear- as much as anybody would like the mythological story related to it. However, a river under water is just as scientific as atoms and molecules.

Why a layer of water can behave like a river

Seawater density is set by its salt content and its temperature. Cold or salty water is heavier. Once a heavy layer starts moving downslope it holds together underneath the lighter water above it rather than mixing away. Oceanographers call the result a density current.

When that heavy layer picks up mud and sand it becomes a turbidity current, and it starts to shape the ground it runs over. Over long periods it cuts a channel and builds raised banks along both sides from the sediment it drops. Sonar surveys of those channels look like river systems because they were made the same way.

These flows are also the cause of deep-water submarine cable failures. In 1929 an earthquake off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland set one off, and twelve transatlantic telegraph cables failed one after another as it ran downslope. The order and the timing of those breaks were what first showed how fast a turbidity current travels, and the answer was tens of kilometres an hour.

Cable operators still route around the risk. Surveys avoid steep sediment slopes and the mouths of submarine canyons, because a single flow can take out several cables in the same corridor within minutes and leave repair ships working the same ground for weeks.

The Bosphorus runs in two directions at once

The Black Sea takes in a great deal of river water, so its surface is much fresher and lighter than the Mediterranean. Through the Bosphorus, brackish Black Sea water flows out along the top while denser Mediterranean water flows in along the bottom. One strait, two currents, opposite ways.

The heavy inflow is what feeds the channel on the Black Sea floor. It also explains why that water never comes back up. Below roughly 150 to 200 metres the Black Sea holds no oxygen at all, and carries dissolved hydrogen sulphide instead. It is the largest volume of oxygen-free water on the planet.

That has a consequence sailors care about. Wood-boring organisms cannot live without oxygen, so timber that would be eaten away within a few years in most seas survives on the Black Sea floor. Some of the best preserved ancient shipwrecks ever found are sitting in it.

What divers are actually looking at in a cenote

In a flooded limestone sinkhole, rainwater floats on saltwater that has worked inland through the rock. The boundary between them is a halocline. It is visible because light bends as it crosses the density change, so a diver sees what looks like a shimmering surface in mid-water.

Dead leaves and branches settle on that boundary rather than sinking through it. Bacteria break them down without oxygen and give off hydrogen sulphide, which clouds the layer. The result is a hazy sheet with debris resting on it, which is why the first accounts described banks and foliage.