Facts about the Baltic Sea

For Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp of Pirates of the Caribbean), the sea signified life and all that had any meaning to his ship. Clearly, over centuries many men have developed deep love for the sea. Many have perished for their love and many have embraced their love after they perished. It is now a very popularly used after death practice, to be "buried at Sea". The sea has also been a source of mystery for decades. One of the biggest mysteries of our time, the Bermuda Triangle, lies in the oceans!

The Baltic Sea, is a stretch of sea located in Northern Europe. It is guarded by the Gulf of Bothnia in the north, the Gulf of Finland on the northeast and the Gulf of Riga on the east. From its south it drains into the North Sea and then into the Atlantic Ocean. It is linked to the White Sea, by the White Sea Canal (which is man-made) and to the North Sea by the North Sea Canal. This sea is the largest body of low salinity water (also known as "brackish water"). For this fact, this sea has gained a lot of popularity among sea researchers. It is a glacially scoured river valley and not formed due to collision of plates (which is the usual reason for sea basin formation); this is the reason for its relative shallowness.

It would also interest many, that this sea is actually only a forth in size of its drainage basin, which roughly holds a population of 85 million. However, 48% of this land is thickly forested, another 17% is just unused open land (I wonder why?), 8% are wetlands and a meager 20% is used for agriculture and pasture. So, the population is concentrated in the remaining 7%. 45% of the population is Polish, 12% is Russian, 10% is Swedish and the rest are from about ten other nationalities. So, the Baltic Sea drainage basin is a multi-cultural place, an obvious reason for its attraction from many tourists and behavioral researchers.

Going back in time, the area was just a river bed prior to the Pleistocene: the Eridanos. Multiple glaciations at this time, would be the plausible reason for the river bed to get further scooped into a sea basin. By the time the Eamian interglacial occurred, the Eamian Sea was well in place. This now leads us to the several names the sea has had over the years. The Romans had christened it as the Mare Suebicum or Mare Sarmaticum. This name originated from the Suebi tribe that resided there. In Getica, Jordanes has called it the Gremanic Sea. The Scandinavians called it "The Eastern Lake". An older name was recorded in Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. It was "Gandvik", "vik" can loosely be comprehended to mean "bay". This shows that the sea was understood as an inlet of the sea since the Viking Age.

The Baltic Sea experiment which started in 1992, is studying the relationship and exchange of energy from the atmosphere to the surface of the earth. This experiment is being conducted to mainly study climatic changes and their causes in a concrete manner. The reason why this sea is selected for this research, is for the fact that the sea is neither a freshwater body, nor a saltwater body. This makes its ecosystem very vulnerable.

The sea, in spite of being one of the best studied sea in the world, is also one of the most polluted ones. The pollution is now being effectively monitored. However, the deterioration of this water body has been in process since decades. It was grave for all those who were tipped off the refugee-ships in 1945. A group of Russian scientists also discovered a whopping figure of 5,000 crashed airplanes and sunken warships at the bottom of the sea. As per their further research, this had happened around the time of the Second World War (This makes one wonder, could we possibly find a treasure there?). Jokes aside, the alarming pollution teamed with the stagnation of its deeper waters, is life-threatening to its resources.

Our planet, our home, is above 70% water. And we humans cannot survive without it. In light of this, would it be acceptable (for the sake of the future generations) to let such deterioration happen to a water body that, by nature, is so mysterious and unique?