50 Fun Facts About Red Sea

The Red Sea separates Africa from which landmass?

It is technically an inlet of a larger ocean, reached through a narrow strait and the Gulf of Aden at its southern end.

The Red Sea is an inlet of which larger body of water?

Its only natural opening to the ocean is at the southern end; the northern link to the Mediterranean is man-made.

Which peninsula sits between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba at the top of the Red Sea?

Egyptian resorts on the peninsula's coast are the heart of what is marketed as the Red Sea Riviera.

What is the name of the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea?

Its Arabic name is usually translated as the Gate of Grief or Gate of Tears, a nod to its dangerous navigation.

How many countries border the Red Sea proper (excluding the two northern gulfs)?

Two of them line the eastern shore and four the western shore.

Which of these countries has a coastline on the Red Sea?

Ethiopia lost its Red Sea coast when Eritrea became independent in 1993.

Which country entirely borders the Gulf of Suez?

The Gulf of Aqaba, by contrast, is shared by four countries.

Which Israeli city sits at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba?

It sits within sight of Jordan's Aqaba, an Egyptian resort and a Saudi town across the gulf.

The English name Red Sea is a direct translation from which language?

Europeans once called it the Erythraean Sea from the same Greek root; the Romans also called it the Sea of Hercules.

Seasonal blooms of which kind of organism are one suggested origin of the Red Sea's name?

Trichodesmium erythraeum turns the surface reddish; another theory says red simply meant south in ancient direction-colour systems.

What is the Biblical Hebrew name for the sea, translated as 'Sea of Reeds'?

Rabbi Saadia Gaon identified the crossing place with the Gulf of Suez.

Which book of the Bible tells of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea?

The Hebrew text uses a name traditionally translated as Sea of Reeds, which was long identified with this sea.

Roughly how long is the Red Sea?

At its widest it is only about 355 km across, which is what makes it such a distinctive stripe on the map.

What is the maximum depth of the Red Sea, reached in the central Suakin Trough?

Despite that trench, about 40 percent of the sea is less than 100 metres deep.

The Red Sea holds which global distinction among tropical seas?

It has also been designated a Global 200 ecoregion for its reef life.

What is the average salinity of the Red Sea, in parts per thousand (the world ocean averages about 35)?

No significant rivers drain into it, evaporation is huge and its opening to the ocean is narrow.

About how much rain falls over the Red Sea and its coasts each year on average?

Evaporation, meanwhile, can run as high as 2,050 mm a year, which is why the water gets saltier and saltier.

The Red Sea was formed by which tectonic process?

The rift is part of the Great Rift Valley system, and geologists expect the sea to become an ocean in time.

After three weeks of tectonic activity in 2005, by roughly how much had the Red Sea widened?

The rift is still active, and the model of John Tuzo Wilson predicts the sea will one day be an ocean.

What did a 1949 deep-water survey discover in the central Red Sea?

Later work found brines at 60 degrees Celsius with metal-rich muds welling up from the rift.

Which volcanic island in the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea erupted violently in 2007?

Two brand-new islands, Sholan and Jadid, then emerged from eruptions in the Zubair Archipelago in 2011 and 2013.

Which country owns the Zubair Archipelago, where two new volcanic islands appeared in 2011 and 2013?

Sholan Island appeared in December 2011 and Jadid in September 2013.

Roughly how many fish species have been recorded in the Red Sea?

About ten percent of them are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth.

How long is the fringing coral reef along the Red Sea coastline?

These reefs are 5,000 to 7,000 years old and built mostly of stony acropora and porite corals.

How many species of shark have been recorded in the Red Sea?

They range from whale sharks and hammerheads to the exceptionally rare great white.

Which park, established by Egypt in 1983, was the first marine protected area in Africa and the Middle East?

The IUCN lists it among the world's top ten sites for effective management of marine ecosystems.

The migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean began after which event?

More than a thousand species have moved north since the canal opened, and the shift is accelerating.

In which year did the Suez Canal open?

A French diplomat formed the company in 1858 and construction took a decade.

Which French diplomat formed the company that built the Suez Canal?

Lepere, an engineer on Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, had earlier revived the ancient idea of a canal.

Which Egyptian leader nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, triggering the Suez Crisis?

Until then British and French shareholders had owned the operating company.

The Suez Canal was closed for eight years after which conflict?

It stayed shut from 1967 to 1975 and never fully regained its dominance over the Cape route.

The earliest known Red Sea explorations were Egyptian voyages seeking trade with which land?

One expedition sailed around 2500 BCE and another, under Hatshepsut, around 1500 BCE.

Which Persian king built a canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea in the 6th century BCE?

He marked its completion with multilingual stelae, and it is sometimes called the ancient Suez Canal.

What is the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea?

Written by an unknown author around the 1st century, it also tells how Hippalus found the direct route to India.

Which Crusader lord launched a raid down the Red Sea in 1183 to attack Muslim pilgrim convoys?

Fear that he meant to sack Mecca and Medina caused fury across the Muslim world.

Which Portuguese commander besieged Aden in 1513, leading the first modern European fleet into the Red Sea?

He was forced to retreat, but his ships cruised the sea through the Bab al-Mandab.

What share of global trade passed through the Red Sea before the 2023 Houthi attacks?

That included about 30 percent of the world's container traffic.

Which armed group's attacks on shipping cut Suez Canal container traffic by about 75 percent in 2024?

Ships rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope added roughly 4,575 nautical miles between Shanghai and Rotterdam.

The SS Thistlegorm, one of the Red Sea's most famous dive wrecks, was sunk in 1941 by what?

The British cargo steamer's holds still contain Bedford trucks and motorbikes bound for Alexandria.

Whose expeditions in the 1950s first made the Red Sea a popular diving destination?

Cousteau followed later, and today resorts from Hurghada to Aqaba form what is called the Red Sea Riviera.

Which Egyptian resort closed all its beaches to swimming in December 2010 after shark attacks?

Suspected causes included overfishing and ships dumping dead livestock overboard.

The Blue Hole, a famous and dangerous dive site, is near which Egyptian town?

It is a cylindrical reef formation, one of several unusual structures produced by the region's tectonic activity.

What is the average surface water temperature of the southern Red Sea in summer?

The north averages about 26 degrees, and winter only knocks a couple of degrees off either figure.

Per the single-origin hypothesis, the strait at the Red Sea's southern end witnessed what?

Sea levels were far lower then, leaving the strait shallow or even dry.

How wide is the Red Sea at its widest point?

Its surface area is roughly 438,000 square kilometres, with an average depth of 490 metres.

Besides Mare Rubrum, the Romans also called the Red Sea the sea of which hero?

Pontus Herculis sat alongside the Latin name Sinus Arabicus, the 'Arabian Gulf'.

Which Egyptian pharaoh sent a famous Red Sea expedition to Punt around 1500 BCE?

An even earlier voyage to Punt took place around 2500 BCE, making these the first recorded explorations of the sea.

Roman trade with India through the Red Sea took off under which emperor?

Once Rome controlled Egypt and the northern Red Sea, goods from China reached the Roman world via Indian ports.

Which new island emerged from an eruption in Yemen's Zubair Archipelago in December 2011?

A second island, Jadid, appeared in September 2013 in the same small volcanic chain.

The cargo ship MV Rubymar sank in the Red Sea in February 2024 carrying how much fertiliser?

Its 18-mile oil slick came from about 200 tons of heavy fuel oil, and the fertiliser raised fears of huge algal blooms.