The Mediterranean Sea is a part of the Atlantic Ocean almost completely enclosed by land, on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia.
The Mediterranean Sea is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Strait of Gibraltar on the west and to the Sea of Marmara and Black Sea, by the Dardanelles and the Bosporus respectively, on the east.
A shallow submarine ridge (the Strait of Sicily) between the island of Sicily and the coast of Tunisia divides the sea in two main subregions (which in turn are divided into subdivisions), the Western Mediterranean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of 1,500 m and the deepest recorded point is 5267 meters = about 3.27 miles in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea.
However, the Strait of Gibraltar is too deep to have dried out in the Ice Age, and the Flood legend may recall the Black Sea re-flooding.
As a result of the drying of the sea during the Messinian Salinity Crisis, the marine biota of the Mediterranean are derived primarily from the Atlantic Ocean.
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