The Sargasso Sea is an ocean. What is a sea without shores

Sea without shores

Look at physical map: expanses of the Atlantic Ocean, closer to the mainland of North America, between 20 ° and 40 ° N. sh. have the shape of a giant ellipse of light green color. This is a one-of-a-kind miracle of nature - the SARGASS SEA, the shores of which are not land, as usual, but large oceanic rivers-currents: in the west and north - North Atlantic, in the east - canary, on South - trade wind, moving around in a clockwise direction.

Acting as a kind of watersheds or dams, the currents do not allow surface water to Sargasso Sea mix with colder waters North Atlantic.

But, unlike ordinary land shores that limit the seas, these water "shores" due to the inconsistency of sea currents undergo significant movements at different times of the year, that is, they "travel". Therefore, the area Sargasso Sea varies from 8.5 to 4 million square meters. km.

The huge oval of the Sargasso Sea stretches for 5,000 km from west to east and 2,000 km from north to south.

Another feature Sargasso Sea is that it, like a gigantic meadow flooded in the midst of the ocean, is covered with such a quantity of floating seaweed as is not found anywhere else on the globe. For one square kilometer sea ​​surface accounts for one to two tons! Christopher Columbus who discovered this sea on his way to America September 16, 1492 called him "seaweed jar" Interestingly, all these algae belong to the same species. First Portuguese sailors They called them "sargasso", because the air bubbles that help the algae move and stay on the water are similar to the grape variety common in Portugal.

Sargassum algae lead a planktonic lifestyle. Scientists for a long time could not decide where they come from. Until recently, it was believed that they were brought by currents from the shores of the Antilles and Bahamas, Cuba, or from the coast Gulf of Mexico. But it turned out that they are born here, live and die. When the plants die, the bubbles burst and the browned algae sink into the ocean depths.

Sargasso algae, like a forest, are densely populated with various living creatures: shrimps, crabs, numerous species of fish, especially mackerel, the so-called flying Sargasso fish, etc.

surface water Sargasso Sea There are about 60 species of flora and fauna. They are poor in plankton, and therefore very transparent. Due to the insignificant movement, the water in the sea is more salty than the surrounding ocean. It is bright blue and one of the most transparent in comparison with the water of all the seas. The water temperature here is also always much higher than in the ocean, and ranges from 18–23°C in January to 21–28°C in July. This is what favors the rapid development of seaweed.

Depth Sargasso Sea reaches 4–7 km. It is located in a zone of high atmospheric pressure, therefore, calm prevails here, which in the era of the sailing fleet often led to the death of ships. Due to the fact that they often carried domestic animals, mainly horses, which were transported from Europe to the American colonies, the latter died in especially large numbers, and the corpses were usually thrown overboard. Hence the name of this area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe ocean - "horse latitudes".

Another unique feature of the sea is that it is the cradle of freshwater eels. Sailing in the summer to spawn from the rivers of Europe and America, they die after it ends, and their descendants, using some mysterious landmarks known only to them, overcoming many thousands of kilometers, return exactly to the places where their parents sailed from (so far an incomprehensible mystery for scientists) in order to return here in 8–9 years, spawn and die.

For the predominance of calm weather Sargasso Sea also called "ladies", and for a large number of algae - "herbal". However, the sea only at first glance seems calm. In 1970, Soviet oceanographers discovered here powerful upward movements of water from great depths, the so-called eddies. It is established that they affect the increase and decrease in temperatures sea ​​water. The sea, in addition, significantly affects the circulation of water. North Atlantic and the climate of the entire northern hemisphere of our planet.

Who are they - the inhabitants of the Bermuda Triangle in the mysterious Sargasso Sea? The very heart of the giant whirlpool in the middle of the Atlantic is teeming with bizarre organisms, wandering eels, and…plastic debris.

text: Lars Abromeit

Everything is shaking. The steering wheel is trying to get out of hand. The sheets creak, the storm wind howls in the shrouds.

We went out to sea training sailboat"Corvit Kramer" three days ago. A day later, the land disappeared from sight. To the very horizon - continuous waves of the Atlantic in foam "caps". Nothing to catch the eye. And there are still eleven days of sailing ahead. Our 41-meter brigantine, which the team affectionately calls "Mother Kramer", despite all the satellite navigators, emergency beacons and life rafts, seems like a helpless tiny sliver.

We are all alone 220 kilometers north of Puerto Rico, right in the middle of an amazing giant whirlpool in the Sargasso Sea. If someone gets sick, if a sail breaks, or if there is a fire, you can only rely on yourself.

The Sargasso Sea has no shores. Its boundaries are not beaches or rocky reefs, but ocean currents. In the west - the Antilles, in the north - the warm Gulf Stream, in the east - the cold Canary Current. It carries water from the depths of the north west coast Africa and south of the Sargasso Sea passes into the North Equatorial Current. Together, these ocean currents twist into a huge spiral that rotates clockwise around Bermuda - the only piece of land within a radius of more than a thousand kilometers. Marine organisms carried by the currents can get stuck in this gigantic whirlpool for years, or even decades.

In the center of the spiral, a complete calm reigns for weeks, due to which sailors from sailing ships nicknamed this cursed place "a trap for lost souls." Christopher Columbus was the first to hit it in 1492 during his legendary voyage in search of western way to India. The languid calm got on his nerves. His companions feared that they were no longer destined to return to Spain.

The famous navigator was the first to describe the unique golden clusters of floating algae with green air bubbles at the ends of the branches. The Portuguese sailors who accompanied him called them "sargasso" - in honor of the small grape variety. It seemed to Columbus that they were in an enchanted place. Dense carpets of algae, birds, a strip of fog and whales clearly indicated the proximity of land. But there was no land. The compass needles danced like crazy, and at night the crew was frightened by a strange glow in the ocean.

Since then, there have been many legends about the Sargasso Sea and the Bermuda Triangle in its western part - with creepy ghost ships, floating islands and "space channels" through which extraterrestrial forces drag ships and planes into another dimension. This area of ​​the Atlantic between 45 and 75 degrees west really holds many secrets. Even for scientists. It is believed that sea turtles have been drifting in circles for years in the tangles of the Sargasso. A bizarre moonfish spawns here, and larvae and juveniles of swordfish, golden mackerel and marlin are unusually common. As well as dozens of species of whales. River eels swim thousands of kilometers from North America and Europe to find a mate in the Sargasso Sea and produce offspring.

Who else lives here? Has our civilization reached these distances? And if so, how did it affect the local ecosystem?

The members of the expedition organized by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (Massachusetts, USA) are trying to answer these questions. The goal of a team of 37 specialists is to sail from the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea more than one thousand miles towards Bermuda - and all the way to New York to study the flora and fauna of the high seas.

In addition, the expedition also has an educational mission. Professor of Oceanography Amy Siuda of the Association for Maritime Education at Woods Hole (USA) took fourteen students with her.
Their task is to study the accumulations of Sargasso with their inhabitants floating on the surface of the sea, as well as particles of garbage.

Ambitious project. Firstly, the area that the expedition members are going to comb in the open sea is comparable in size to the territory of the European Union. Secondly, the Sargasso Sea is fraught with many dangers. There are huge depths here - under the keel of our sailboat, the highest peaks of the Alps would now easily fit. And unpredictable weather, which at one time almost drove Columbus to despair.

But our "Admiral" Amy Siuda is not afraid of the vagaries of the Sargasso Sea. She has been throwing her "net" into it for 17 years.

The guys from the “A” team, after a night watch, fall exhausted into their beds. Ten o'clock in the morning. Among the waves, the first bunches of sargasso are already flashing. It's time for us to work.

Amy Siuda in her final months of pregnancy. But this does not prevent her from commanding her students. With the help of a winch, they lower three nets overboard, with which they will trawl the sea: one at a depth of 70 meters, the other at 150 meters, and the third at the very surface. Where the Sargasso drift.

The researchers are bringing dozens of beams aboard. Each of them is a miniature forest in which life is seething. Branches of algae are covered with tiny cnidarians and barnacles. Drifting across the sea in their houseboats, they feed on plankton. Poisonous slugs swarm among the air bubbles on the stems. Their golden coloration is the perfect camouflage. Predatory shrimp smaller than a fingernail search for prey in dense thickets. In one of the bunches, even a Sargasso sea clown hid, tightly clinging to the branches with its pectoral fins. He changes color like a chameleon, explains Siuda. And he hunts from ambush for small fish or his relatives.

More than 140 species of invertebrates and 127 species of fish find food and shelter in the Sargasso. Ten of them, including anglerfish, needlefish, crustaceans, snails and sea anemones, spend their whole lives in them. Others look into the Sargasso in passing. For example, flying fish, twisting "nests" of bubble caviar under their canopy. Large migratory species such as tuna or sailfish come here to hunt. And it is here, as we managed to find out with the help of radio beacons, that sea turtles spend the first years of their lives. Algae carpets provide them with reliable protection. In addition, the water in the Sargasso is several degrees warmer than in the open sea, which contributes to the growth of reptiles. On floating islands birds also visit - typhoons, terns and boobies feed and rest in the Sargasso Sea during transatlantic flights.

In the ecosystem of the open sea, sargasso act as "mini-incubators". But about the algae themselves, which about 40 million years ago separated from their coastal relatives and went into free swimming, surprisingly little is known.

There are two types of them: floating sargassum and submerged sargassum. The first has smaller leaf plates, the second has larger ones. But do they differ from each other in the species composition of their inhabitants? And on what routes do they drift across the sea?

“The only reliable source of information about these algae is from the Marine Education Association expeditions,” says Siuda. “For the past 20 years, they have been the only ones who have been making regular observations in the Sargasso Sea.” The conclusion of the participants of these expeditions is unequivocal: two species of Sargassum algae form the same different ecosystems as coniferous and deciduous forests. And they are inhabited by different organisms. Swimming Sargassums seem to have been drifting with the current for years all the way to the straits of the Caribbean Sea. And the submerged slowly move within the southern part of the Sargasso Sea. But why?

"It's hard to say," Siuda replies, unraveling the tangles of seaweed. Scientific data is still insufficient, and it is extremely difficult to collect them.

First hour of the night. The port of St. George in Bermuda is about 500 nautical miles away. The excitement finally stopped. On the sea, only a slight swell.

In the laboratory cabin, plankton researchers evaluate the evening's catch. Siuda is distributing the captured eel larvae to the students, who are to take tissue samples for DNA analysis. Under the microscope, leptocephalic larvae look like ghosts: a completely transparent flattened body, a tiny head with a mouth bristling with sharp teeth. They have so little in common with adult eels that for a long time scientists considered them to be a separate species.

Our team already has about 300 larvae. Most belong to the conger family - these are conger eels. But there are also several larvae of the river eel among them. For explorers, these are real treasures. Perhaps they will provide clues to one of the biggest mysteries of marine biology: where exactly do European eels come from?

Disputes about this have been going on since antiquity. Fish similar to snakes are born from bottom silt, Aristotle believed. No, they multiply by rubbing against rocks, Pliny the Elder assured. Eels hatch from drops of morning dew, Isaac Walton, author of The Artful Angler, argued authoritatively in the 17th century.

Today, all evidence points to American and European river eels swimming to the Sargasso Sea, where they mate, spawn, and then die. In any case, it was here, south of Bermuda, that the youngest eel larvae were found. But decisive evidence is lacking. They could be eel caviar. Or a photo of a mating pair. Or at least the corpse of an adult eel from the depths of the sea. Any such find would be a sensation.

But for now, biologists have to be content with hypotheses. Presumably, during migration, eels are guided by ocean fronts - the boundaries between two water masses with different temperature, chemical, or dynamic characteristics. And possibly the earth's magnetic field. So they swim more than 6,000 kilometers - from the coast of Europe across the Atlantic. At some point, they find their "half". And their larvae drift along the Gulf Stream back to Europe.

But why such difficulties? So far there is no answer to this question. It is possible that this is just an atavism. Eels may have spawned in the Sargasso Sea region 130 million years ago, when the continents were closer together. Or maybe it's all about the abundance of algae. Flat larvae have plenty of nutritious “sea snow” here - particles of dead algae that stick together with the secretions of planktonic organisms and rise to the surface with air bubbles at night.

All these are just hypotheses, but the example of the eel shows how complex the ecosystem of the open sea is organized. It is permeated with a whole network of migration routes, along which even fragile eel larvae can get alive and healthy from the Sargasso Sea to the rivers of Europe.

Ocean routes depend on natural elements. The Gulf Stream alone pumps every second 150 times more water than all the rivers of the earth combined. Short-term water eddies push cold masses of water saturated with nutrients from the depths to the surface. And in the middle of the Sargasso Sea, blooming oases suddenly appear, where there are almost 100 thousand times more planktonic diatoms than in neighboring water areas. This oceanic "desert" produces every year three times more plant biomass than its equal size Bering Sea, which is considered very "fertile".

But sea ​​currents not too picky. Along with sargassum, plankton and eel larvae, they carry garbage from our cities into the open sea. Millions of tons of garbage enter the seas every year (see infographic on page 40). Only a small part of it is visible from the Corvit Cramer: plastic bottles, pieces of foam. But on the net it comes across in frightening quantities: up to 200 plastic fragments in half an hour.

Basically it is the so-called "microplastic". Multi-colored particles smaller than five millimeters make up 90 percent of the plastic debris drifting across the oceans.

The spread of microplastics in the oceans is one of the most serious environmental issues modernity, experts say. Microparticles, like magnets, attract and accumulate toxins, carcinogenic chloride compounds and heavy metals. Then they are absorbed by the smallest filter feeders: copepods, planktonic larvae, salps, molluscs and fish fry. And in the end, having passed through the food chain, they return to people again.

In addition, microplastics carry disease-causing viruses and bacteria through the oceans. What exactly? This is what Siuda is trying to establish together with microbiologist Will Mellvin. Back in 2013, their colleagues were able to prove that more than a thousand species of bacteria live on individual microplastic particles in the Sargasso Sea. Some of these nomadic communities are dominated by bacteria of the genus, a group of microbes that includes cholera pathogens and deadly nerve poison generators. Thus, under the cover of the sea, a completely new ecosystem is formed. Siuda calls it the "plasticosphere".

On the fourteenth day of sailing, land finally appears on the horizon: Bermuda. But a nine-point storm that has flown in from the north makes us “dance” on the waves for another thirty hours, writhing in bouts of seasickness.

Flaming sunrises, the roar of a storm, endless expanses - the sea does not skimp on grandiose spectacles. But at the end of the voyage, only one prosaic detail remains in the memory: two hundred plastic particles in a small test tube with sea water.

Will the day come when there will be as many garbage patches in the Sargasso Sea as islands of algae? Who will prevent this ecological apocalypse? The Sargasso Sea is outside state borders, and to protect it based on international law very difficult. Moreover, even the status of a marine protected area will still not protect it from plastic debris: it is known that sea currents can carry a piece of plastic across the Atlantic in just a few weeks.

In 2010, American scientists tried to assess the possible damage from the "plasticosphere". As they moved east from Bermuda, they recorded up to 26 million microplastic particles per square kilometer - about the same as the concentration of plankton. Scientists have suggested that after a couple of miles this figure may increase.

But they failed to verify their guess: they had too little time, and the sea turned out to be too large.

Text by Pavel Digay

In February of this year, the French yacht "Julia" was in trouble. Having passed the Panama Canal, she was heading from the shores Central America to the shores of Europe. There were four people on board the yacht: two adults - father and mother, and their two children - a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. Safely passing the Caribbean Sea, passing between Haiti and Cuba, leaving behind Bahamas, the yacht turned to the northeast. The travelers had no intention of visiting Bermuda, they wanted to go straight to Gibraltar to go to the Mediterranean and in Marseille, at home, to put an end to their round-the-world trip. All was well until thunder struck. Literally. The sky was covered with clouds. From them to the sea stretched lightning. One of them - perhaps because the Julia's hull is made of steel - hit the mast. Fortunately, the lightning rod worked reliably, but the navigational equipment was disabled. And not only the devices themselves, all the wiring turned out to be unusable. The situation, however, did not look dramatic, there are sails, a motor, in the end you can ask for help ... But it turned out that the engine could not be started, damaged batteries did not allow contact with the ground, the emergency buoy also refused to work - and not a breeze. Complete, dead calm! So it was the next day, and a week later, and two weeks later. However, there was no panic on board: there was enough food, although the non-working refrigerator made adjustments to the menu, there was also enough water. It remained to be patient and wait, entertaining yourself with a swim among the Sargasso seaweed. Yes, the yacht and its crew ended up in the center of the Sargasso Sea, a mysterious and, as it was believed in past centuries, deadly place.

How deadly?

During the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, when Spanish, Portuguese and other sailing ships sailed from the Old World to the New World, they often fell into a calm zone, stretching between 23-35 ° N. sh. and 30-68° W. e. The merciless sun and complete calm for many weeks led to the fact that people lost their minds and even died of hunger and thirst. Indeed, this happened, but for some ship to become completely depopulated for the indicated reason - there is no documentary evidence of this, these are already stories. Another thing is certain: having become prisoners of the Sargasso Sea, the first thing the sailors did was get rid of the horses that were taken to the American colonies. That is why these latitudes were nicknamed "horse" - Horse Latitudes. But sooner or later the wind filled the sails, and the ships continued on their way.

The Julia drifted for eighteen days. Although it seemed that the yacht was frozen in place, in fact it was slowly circling clockwise in a huge whirlpool, which is called the Sargasso merry-go-round. But the wind came, and everything started to move - the people on board smiled, and the yacht headed towards the shore, but towards the one that is closer, to Bermuda. She got there without any incidents to the great joy of the crew, who were burning with impatience to tell the world and journalists about their stay in the heart of the Sargasso Sea. Their story, however, turned out to be colorful only at the beginning, where there was a thunderstorm, thunder and lightning, but then ... day after day the same thing. Heat, sublimates, swimming, algae - melancholy! Nevertheless, he makes us turn to past examples, and not from glorious times, but relatively recent ones.

In 1894, the schooner Norwood was heading from the United States to Europe. A hurricane swept her south into the Sargasso Sea. Even in the first stormy days, the crew of the schooner left the ship, which gave a leak, and moved to boats, while forgetting about the cabin boy, the cook's assistant named Thomson. Left alone on a ship that had sunk, but kept on the water, Thomson did not give up, but repaired one of the remaining boats, armed it with a mast and a sail, and got out of the trap (and his “comrades” in the crew disappeared into the ocean). As the young man later said, during his journey through the sea, reminiscent of a "green meadow or swamp", he saw an old galleon entangled in algae, an 18-gun brig next to it, and a rusted steamer in the distance. This would have been enough for him, but the subsequent story about the meeting with the sea serpent somewhat undermined the credibility of everything that was said earlier. However…

In 1912, the Italian three-masted sailing ship Herat was also “delivered” by a storm to the Sargasso Sea. For seven months, a hopeless drift in a vicious circle continued. During this time, the sailors saw huge "islands" of algae, from which tree trunks and wrecks of sunken ships protruded. When food and water supplies were almost exhausted, a saving fresh breeze carried the Herat into clear waters.

And before that ... Joshua Slocum - this name is known to every sailor. In 1898, completing trip around the world- the first circumnavigation of the world, accomplished on a yacht under sail alone, Slocum was stuck in the Sargasso Sea for a whole week. 10 years have passed, and in 1909, the captain of the Spray set off on his famous boat from the island of Martha's Vineyard (Massachusetts) to South America. Since then, no one has seen him again. And it seems that his path lay just across the Sargasso Sea ...

And one more thing ... In 1955, the Connemara-4 yacht was discovered in the Sargasso Sea without a single person on board. What happened on board remains a mystery.

And finally… In 2012 the crew Russian yacht Scorpius, led by Captain Sergei Nizovtseva, tried to set a world record by completing two round-the-world trips without a break in one year - around Antarctica and the North Pole. At the point with coordinates 27 degrees 9 minutes s. sh., 64 degrees 50 minutes for s. d., and this is the "roadside" of the Sargasso Sea, the yacht was struck by lightning. All navigational devices failed, except for ... the Russian GLONASS. And the motor was fine too. So our travelers did not have a chance to experience all the horrors of the "Sargasso captivity" - they left! And then the record was set.

So what is it, the Sargasso Sea?

First, about the title. When the ships of Christopher Columbus made their way through these waters, the sailors paid attention to the berries with which the branches of algae were hung, they very much resembled sargazo - the berries of small wild grapes. So they began to call strange algae, and then the sea, which became Sargasso, although, if desired, it can be translated poetically - the Sea of ​​​​Vines. By the way, in the old days this sea was also called the Ladies Sea, because, according to the sailors, even the weakest woman can hold the helm here. The Ladies' Sea is also beautiful.

It should be noted that the "berries" of algae are not fruits at all, the Sargasso do not have them at all, they reproduce by spores. In fact, this is something like floats filled with air that hold the plant near the surface. Sargasso grow along the coasts of the West Indies and the American continent, where they are not floating, but take root in the bottom soil. Hurricanes tear them up and carry them into the ocean, where they are picked up by currents and collected in the whirlpool of the Sargasso Sea. The stocks of floating algae here are estimated at about 10 million tons.

Let us return, however, to the sea. However, some geographers believe that this section of the World Ocean cannot be called a sea at all. Because it has no shores! Another - most of the geographers object to this: the presence of coasts, they say, is not the main feature that the scientific world gives to the seas, the main thing is special hydrometeorological conditions, namely, they sharply distinguish these waters from their surroundings. And this is undeniable.

The Sargasso Sea (we will still call it that) is located above the deep part of the Atlantic Ocean - the North American Basin, whose maximum depth is 6995 m. The boundaries of the sea, which has the shape of a giant ellipse, are ocean currents: in the north - the North Atlantic, in the south - the North Trade Wind, in the west - the Gulf Stream, in the east - the Canary.

It is clear that "liquid coasts" are by definition unstable, so the area of ​​the sea is constantly changing from 8.5 to 4 million km2. Those who have taken the Sargasso Sea into a ring of currents drive their water into it, at the same time making it difficult for its water to go out. That is why the level of the Sargasso Sea is 1-2 meters higher than the surrounding ocean. But this is not the only result. Another is the increased salinity of the water due to the immiscibility of the layers and, for the same reason, its temperature. In the winter months, the water temperature does not fall below +18, and in summer it reaches +28; even at a depth of 400 m, the water is warm - up to +17, while in other areas of the ocean at the same depth the temperature is only +5 °.

The Sargasso Sea is located in a zone of high atmospheric pressure, so strong winds rarely blow here. There are few rainfalls. Vapors are strong. internal currents weak. As a result, the water is extremely poor in oxygen, and hence in phytoalgae, and hence in zooplankton. That's why here is clear water- visibility reaches 60 meters, which is higher than in the Red Sea, which is considered the standard of water purity due to the lack of flowing rivers. But for the same reason, the fauna here is not rich in wealth. But the one that is, is unique!

Sargasso steel houseboat for tiny crustaceans and crabs, shrimps, seahorses... Almost all the inhabitants of the Sargassum community have a body shape and colors that hide them among the algae. Such is the Sargasso clown, whose body looks like a twig of sargassum, he is yellow-brown, and his fins resemble hands with which he “grabs” seaweed. An interesting animal is the traveler crab, known for, which upset the sailors of Columbus: when they saw a Sargasso crab sitting on a branch, they mistakenly decided that the land was somewhere nearby. IN old times there were a lot of turtles in the Sargasso Sea, and they even sometimes saved sailors, captivated by calm, from starvation. Of the creatures of a more impressive size, there are dolphins that feed on flying fish, and sharks, but since there are very few people who want to splash among the algae of the Sargasso Sea, there is no data on the tragic meetings of people with sharks. And also - eels! Only a little over a century ago, their secret was discovered - they spawn in the Sargasso Sea, thousands of kilometers from their rivers, and, having given life to a new generation, die in its waters. But why they make such a long journey, there is still no intelligible answer.

Truly, the Sargasso Sea is one continuous phenomenon.

But is it worth it to attribute to him what is not, as experts in the field of "paranormal" knowledge do? It is the Sargasso Sea that they consider guilty of all the troubles that happen in the notorious Bermuda Triangle. One of the leading "experts", Australian oceanographer Richard Sylvester, argues that the unhurried "carousel" of the Sargasso Sea gives rise to smaller, but incredibly strong and swift whirlpools that drag ships into the abyss. In turn, the minicyclones, which have arisen due to whirlpools, suck in planes. Such hypotheses are, of course, curious as "mind games", but you should listen to other scientists who are concerned that there is more and more plastic garbage in the center of the "carousel", and this is no longer a secret - a problem that needs to be solved.

Win-win plot
The legends surrounding the Sargasso Sea could not but be reflected in literature, and above all adventure literature. Painfully suitable were the "decorations" - broken ships of all sizes and eras, decayed sails, skulls and bones, and treasures that the inhabitants of this incredible world do not need, from which there is no way out alive.
Writers have approached this plot more than once, but hardly anyone will dare to dispute the fact that Alexander Belyaev, known not only for his books Amphibian Man or Air Seller, but also for The Island Lost Ships».
The first chapters of the novel were published in The World Pathfinder in 1926. The following year, the publication was completed, and a separate edition appeared at the same time. Since then, the novel has been reprinted many times, its total circulation has long exceeded ten million copies. And all because the history of a strange state in the center of the Sargasso Sea, where dozens of abandoned ships pressed against each other, turned out to be excitingly interesting. Plus, the love of the main characters and the attempt on this love by the Governor of the Island. Plus a crime that never happened, and an absolutely positive character, who is actually a criminal. In general, a complete set of fascinating moves, which are not at all hindered by the class struggle and denunciation of the "animal grin of capitalism."
In 1987, based on the novel, a film of the same name was shot, which turned out to be unsuccessful, despite the presence of the "star" Konstantin Raikin in it. Because the film was performed like a musical, and dances and songs somehow do not fit with real adventures, brutal heroes and flawless beauties.
In 1994, again based on the novel, the film drama Rains in the Ocean was filmed. Few have heard of this film, and even fewer have watched it. And who saw, he will agree: it is for the best. The movie failed.
But the book lives on! And absolutely deserved.

The geographical boundaries of the seas are not always dry land. And the sea itself sometimes is not at all a water surface, which we are used to seeing. The name will not be quite right with geographic point vision, since the "shores" of such seas are limited not by land, but by currents.

... We ended up in the area of ​​the Sargasso Sea, the mysterious sea, which is located west of Corvo - one of Azores. This sea covers an area six times the size of Germany. It is completely covered with a thick carpet of algae. “Algae” in Spanish is “sargassa”, hence the name of the sea ...

How is it: the sea in the middle of the ocean? asked Miss Kingman.

This question has not yet been solved by the scientists themselves. As they should know, the warm Gulf Stream is heading north from the Straits of Florida towards Svalbard. But on the way this current splits, and one branch returns to the south, reaches the Azores, goes to the western shores of Africa and, finally, having described a semicircle, returns to Antilles. It turns out a warm ring, in which there is cold, calm water - the Sargasso Sea.

Look at the ocean!

Everyone looked around and were amazed: the surface of the ocean lay motionless before them, like a stagnant pond. Not the slightest wave, movement, splash. The first rays of the sun illuminated this strange, frozen sea, which looked like a continuous carpet of greenish-pale algae.

Belyaev A., “The Island of the Lost Ships”

In fact, there is nothing to add to the words of Alexander Romanovich: in his novel, he provided enough exact description a unique natural formation, which is the Sargasso Sea. “Liquid”, unstable coasts formed by currents change their shape throughout the year, and the area of ​​the sea fluctuates between 6-7 million km2. Due to the direction of the currents and atmospheric pressure in this section of the Atlantic Ocean, the water is almost motionless, except for powerful flows ascending from a depth of 7 km, discovered in the 1970s by Soviet oceanographers.

But it is not the absence of “material” shores that attracts researchers here, namely algae, sargasso. Here is the largest collection of them. It is possible that once the navigators got into a particularly dense area: among experienced sailors, the story quickly acquires extraneous details, and as a result it turns out true legend. It is possible that Belyaev included one of these legends in his novel: the ship got stuck in a dense Sargassum "porridge" and could not get out of there. The crew died of hunger and thirst, and the seaweed-bound ships were destroyed one by one among the Sargasso. It is this version that found its place in the “Island of the Lost Ships” (there were many like it): in the center of the Sargasso Sea, ships that fell into its brown-green captivity formed whole island, on which, by some miracle, the few surviving crew members supported their existence. In fairness, it should be noted that to this day this version attracts many scientists: at the beginning of the last century, the Danish microbiologist E. Winge would have described the case when the ship hit a real Sargasso field - wherever you look, everything around was densely covered with algae, and free water was visible only close to the sides of the vessel. Columbus also encountered Sargasso during his historic journey: he aptly dubbed this section of the Atlantic the “seaweed jar”.

It is believed that for the first time the name “banka” was given by Portuguese sailors: the underwater part of the algae, due to the presence of air bubbles on it, is very similar to a bunch of one of the grape varieties - “sargasso”, hence the second name of the sea, which was very popular in its time - Grape . The seaweed itself is still called “sea grapes”. A small bush, no more than one and a half meters long, for the most part hidden under the surface of the water, the visible part is just a few leaves that act as a sail. Initially, the roots of the plant cling to the bottom, but, breaking away and following the current or gusts of wind, they stray into the so-called thallus, of which the Sargasso Sea consists. There was another version, according to which floating sargasso are formed “on the spot”, vegetatively; however, over time, it was dispelled: being torn from the bottom, the sargasso do not breed. One way or another, but within the sea there are up to 11 tons. In the Sargasso Sea, representatives of about 60 species of living creatures and plants coexist calmly with each other. On the scale of the ocean, this is negligible, and this can soon be lost: not so long ago, among the Sargasso thalli, another “layering” was formed, the fault of which is man. The currents that delineate the boundaries of the sea become unwitting accomplices in the collection of garbage. Everything that gets into the Gulf Stream in the west, the Canary Current in the east, the North Atlantic in the north and the North Trade Wind in the south, all garbage - everything is “concentrated” in the Sargasso Sea. Plastic and other waste formed a floating layer of debris there.

What's the name of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Another option is the Eastern Garbage Continent. Imagine, the seventh continent - and from the garbage! It was “predicted” back in 1988, but apart from research, absolutely no action is being taken. This "mainland" is located approximately at 135°-155° west longitude and 35°-42° north latitude. Due to the fact that the center of the North Pacific Current System is almost motionless, it is there that all the waste that enters this part of the ocean daily gets knocked down. About 20% dropped from ships, the rest - from land. According to 2001 data, the mass of plastic waste in this zone slightly exceeded 3.5 million tons, now it is already more than 100 million. The area of ​​the “spot” is not constant, it varies from 700 thousand to 1.5 million km 41% to 0.81% total area Pacific Ocean). One of the “discoverers” of the water dump said that at first people thought it was some kind of island that you could walk on, but this is not so. The consistency of the “continent” is more like a soup: pieces of plastic and other waste float there at a depth of one to one hundred meters, moreover, about 70% of all accumulated trash is supposed to sink to the bottom and lie in the ground. If Belyaev created the "Island of Lost Ships", then humanity as a whole may well create an Island of Garbage and Waste. This spot is not visible from the satellite: most of the anthropogenic emissions are under water, and they can only be distinguished from the ship or when diving with aqualung, besides, the smallest particles of plastic are not much larger than small marine life. Ships rarely go here, so everyone pretends that there is no problem as such. In addition, the North Pacific whirlpool refers to neutral waters - no one is going to take responsibility for this section of the Ocean. The impending catastrophe is paid attention only when another storm covers nearest beaches thick layer of debris. The concentration of plastic in many places of "garbage" exceeds the concentration of zooplankton by seven times! 90% is plastic, and only 10% is allocated for organic waste. I believe that there is no need to talk about the impact this dump has on the animal world. Birds feed their chicks with plastic, trying to get enough of it themselves, turtles also eat it, confusing it with food. The result is a painful death from poisoning, starvation or suffocation.

Since 2008, research has been organized, samples have been taken, laboratories have been opened that study the garbage continent. I would be very happy to write that regular work is being done to clean up the ocean and process the waste floating there, but, unfortunately, I cannot. So far, the scientific world provides only words. A spot in the Sargasso Sea, a "garbage swirl" in the Pacific and Indian oceans, and hundreds and thousands of similar, smaller formations that float in all open waters and ... no one cares about them. Neutral territory.

The Sargasso Sea got its name because of the algae - Sargasso. The algae themselves are relatively small, but strong winds and high standing waves knock them into huge "fields" that stretch for miles across the surface of the sea. There are many legends about ships that disappeared in the sea thickets associated with this sea.

Geography

Located in subtropical latitudes, the Sargasso Sea is the only one in the world that does not have solid shores. It lacks clear geographical boundaries, its area is outlined by strips of currents that form a stagnant center of a closed anticyclonic circulation between the Canary, North Atlantic and North Trade wind currents. Since the boundaries of the currents change from season to season, the size of the sea is not constant and the area varies from 6 to 7 million km 2.
But the depths of the Sargasso Sea are known more precisely: most of it is located in the North American Basin - a lowering of the bottom between the underwater North Atlantic Ridge, the continental slope of North America and the underwater elevation of the arc of the West Indies, where depths of more than 6000 m prevail.
In the central part of the basin there is the Bermuda underwater plateau, which rises above the sea surface and forms the Bermuda Islands of volcanic origin.
It got its name from the accumulations of Sargasso algae floating on its surface. The abundance of Sargasso in this place is associated with converging surface currents, constant wind and strong waves. That is why the algae are located with the stem part in the direction of the prevailing winds and are arranged in relatively regular rows.
Sargassums are bottom, attached to the bottom of the sea by roots, and floating, torn off from the bottom and held on the surface of the water by small bubbles growing on stems. Because of these bubbles, Sargasso is sometimes called a sea grape. When the algae die, the vesicles they hold on burst and the plants sink.
The mass of algae floating in the sea is difficult to calculate, but approximately ranges from 4 to 11 million tons.
Sargasso, which formed a "forest" in the middle of the ocean, turned into a habitat for a variety of marine life: mackerel, flying fish, needlefish, crab, sea ​​turtle, as well as sea anemones and bryozoans.
The exact date of the appearance of the name of the Sargasso Sea is unknown, but it refers to the XV century. The name of the sea was given by the Portuguese, who explored and reached during their journey to the circulation of the currents of the Atlantic (they called it "volta du mar"). Their eyes appeared "islands" of algae. Presumably, the authorship of the name belongs to the Spanish naturalist Gonzalo de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557), who called this space Sargasso, which means "algae" in Portuguese.
The Sargasso Sea was first crossed in 1492 by the expedition of Christopher Columbus (1450-1451), who described it as a "jar of seaweed".
The Sargasso Sea is located in the central part of the Atlantic Ocean, in the center of the circulation formed by the currents of the Gulf Stream, Canary, North Atlantic and North Trade Winds. Most big islands- Bermuda. In the era of sailing ships, it was considered a risky navigation area due to the accumulation of algae - sargasso.
In the Sargasso Sea there is a giant garbage patch of plastic and other waste, formed by ocean currents, gradually collecting garbage thrown into the ocean in one place.
Sargasso Sea - a place of amazing natural phenomenon: spawning of the European river eel. Here, eel fry hatch from eggs and, picked up by the Gulf Stream, move for three years along with the warm water mass to Europe or east coast North America, where they approach the mouths of the rivers and rise upstream. After 9-12 years, the eel returns to the Sargasso Sea, overcoming about 8 thousand km of the way to spawn.
Bermuda is the only major islands in the Sargasso Sea - an overseas territory of Great Britain, about a thousand kilometers from the coast of North America. Most of the population are descendants of African slaves who once worked here on sugar cane plantations. One third of the population is white. Bermuda is an important financial center off the coast of the United States: thousands of foreign companies, including shipping companies, are registered here. However, the main problem for the islands remains the lack of water: there are no rivers here, and the only source fresh water, as in colonial times, tropical showers remain.
In the era of sailing, sargassums were a serious obstacle to slow-moving caravels, which later gave rise to many legends about islands formed from ships forever stuck in algae. Indeed, in the days of sailboats, ships were found here, stuck among the algae and abandoned by the crew, sometimes with skeletons on board. The names of these vessels and the dates of their disappearance and discovery are precisely known.
The southwestern part of the Sargasso Sea is occupied by the Bermuda Triangle, where, according to supporters of the existence anomalous phenomena, occur mysterious disappearances ships and aircraft. At the same time, explanations are put forward, one more bizarre than the other: abductions by "alien pirates", the activities of the surviving inhabitants of Atlantis, the presence of the "thermal point" of the Earth as a living space object, poisonous gas distributed by plants.
Scientists, in response to fantastic assumptions about the reasons for the disappearance of ships and aircraft, offer more realistic versions of the incidents. The main reason for the appearance of rumors about aliens is the fact that lines pass over Bermuda air traffic from the USA and Canada to Europe, Central and South America.
In the old days, the water of the Sargasso Sea was exceptionally clean, and its transparency reached 60 m. But this is a long time ago: today the waters are heavily polluted with fuel oil, which accumulates on algae.
In addition, the algae has become the site of a concentration of floating plastic waste, which has formed an artificial island called the North Atlantic Garbage Patch. It reaches hundreds of kilometers in length and width. Due to the continuous circular motion of ocean currents, the garbage thrown into the ocean is gradually concentrated in one area, representing a tremendous danger to the ecosystems of the Atlantic.

general information

Islands: Bermuda.

Major port: Hamilton (Bermuda Island) - 1800 people. (2010).
Languages: English, Portuguese.
Ethnic composition: Africans, whites, mestizos.

Religions: Christianity (Protestantism, Methodism, Adventism, Catholicism), Islam.

Monetary units: Bermuda dollar, US dollar.

natural borders(ocean currents): in the west - the Gulf Stream, in the north - the North Atlantic, in the east - the Canary, in the south - the North Trade Wind.

Numbers

Width: 1100 km.

Length: 3200 km.
Max Depth: from 6995 to 7100 m (North American Basin).

Salinity: 36.5-37% o.

Climate and weather

Average air temperature in January: from +18 to +24°С.

Average air temperature in July: +26°С.

Average surface water temperature in January: +18°С in the north, +25°С in the south.

Average surface air temperature in July: in the northwest +26°С, in the southeast +28°С.

Average annual rainfall: 1000 mm.

Relative humidity: 70-80%.

Economy

Sea fishing.

Attractions

Curious facts