Where exactly is the Black Sea? It is formed by three
rivers: the Danube, the Dnieper and the River Don and is
bordered by six countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey,
Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. The population of the greater
Black Sea basin is more than 160 million.

Nobody really knows why the Black Sea is called such.
Some say that it gained its name from sailors and pirates
who were struck by its dark appearance when the sky turned
black with storm clouds. The Ancient Greeks called the
Black Sea the Scythian Sea, after the not so friendly
tribes who lived on its shores at the time. Shipwrecked
sailors could generally expect no a hard time from the
Scythians, who raided the wrecks and were said to have made
wine goblets out of sailors’ skulls. The Greeks also called
it Pontos Axenos – the inhospitable sea – until they
settled in Crimea, after which they changed their minds and
called it Pontos Euxenos: the hospitable sea.

The Black Sea is very deep (1,271m at the centre) but
it’s less salty than most oceans. It began life as a fresh
water lake about 22,000 years ago. About 7,000 –
9,000 years ago, global warming melted glaciers and the
polar ice-caps, sea levels rose and eventually the
Mediterranean overflowed through the Bosporus, turning the
lake into the Black Sea. Many archaeologists think that
this catastrophic event was in fact the Noah’s Flood of the
Bible.

The sea is unique in having two layers, an oxygenated
upper layer, about 200m deep, with fish life, and a `dead’
lower layer, where until recently nothing was thought to be
able to survive.

A peculiarity of the Black Sea is the bi-directional
current where it flows through the Bosporus straits on its
way to the Mediterranean. The surface current flows
westwards through the straits into the Sea of Marmaris, but
there is a deep current which flows simultaneously in the
opposite direction, back into the Black Sea.

There are plenty of beaches in The Crimea, of Florence
Nightingale fame – some 517 km of beaches – mostly
small pebbles and some black volcanic sand. Many beaches
are public, and the private ones owned by hotels and
sanatoria are usually open to non-patrons at a price of
around 3 Hryvnias (£0.40p or $0.56 cents) per day. There
are also naturist beaches near Koktebel in the east.