Black Sea Undersea River

The Black Sea undersea river is a current of unusually saline water that flows along the seabed of the Black Sea after entering through the Bosphorus Strait, where denser Mediterranean water sinks beneath the Black Sea lower salinity surface layer. The channel runs about 60 kilometers, reaches depths up to 35 meters, is roughly 1 kilometer wide, moves at about four miles per hour, and carries a discharge of some 22,000 cubic meters per second, ten times the flow of the Rhine. It exhibits features typical of a surface river, including banks, floodplains, waterfalls and rapids, and the two way, depth separated exchange through the Bosphorus that sustains it is thought to have been established around 7,500 years ago. Scientists at the University of Leeds announced its discovery on August 1, 2010, the first confirmed case of a river like current flowing along an ocean floor.