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Originally Posted by trux
There is a well grounded theory that the Black Sea was a brackish water inland lake, and was catastrophically flooded from the Mediterranean Sea through Bosporus and Dardanelles some 7000 years ago.
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Yes, see my ps. in my message above. That theory doesn't seem to be well supported due to conflicting evidence.
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Robert Ballard (the famous oceanographer who found Titanic) found shorelines and rest of a building some 100m below the current surface. When I heard about it around 2002, I expected it to become a sensational news filling all newspapers, and causing the rewriting of school books, but strangely only couple of specialized magazines posted a few lines or an article about it. Although the discovery in fact confirms the biblical Great Deluge, it looks like it is not something jewish, muslim, and christian religious leaders and fundamentalists wanted to hear, because to them such Deluge was not global enough 
There is a quote about the research here:
Read more about Robert Ballard's research for example here: National Geographic: Noah’s Flood/Black Sea Expedition--Flash
More on the Deluge history here: Black Sea deluge theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Back to the salinity: the surface salinity of the Black Sea is at 18.5 ppt. For comparison the average ocean surface salinity is 34.7 ppt, the Mediterranean Sea 38 ppt, Red Sea 40 ppt, and the Baltic Sea (the sea between Scandinavia and the Eurpean mainland) just 8 ppt (that's already considered brackish).
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How about the Caspian Sea and Dead Sea? I guess 25ppt & 45ppt.
I had thought the Black about 12ppt
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I really loved diving in the Black Sea - besides its fauna and flora different than in the Mediterranean Sea, also the salinity is very pleasant - you can dive without a mask and feel no irritation in eyes and sinus like in most other seas, and even less than in freshwater. And the visibility was not that bad at all. I've been at the Black Sea about ten times (mostly end of August to late September), and the visibility of 10m was not that exceptional.
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Has anyone here dived the Black Sea and Caspian Sea? Are they quite different? They were both once part of the Peri-Tethys Sea (or Para-Tethys)
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Some theories tell it is the algae, others speak about high concentration of hydrogen sulfide that causes the black color. It may be a combination of both. Personally I never found the Black Sea really black - until I once dove to 20m - suddenly I was in a total darkness
No tide at all, but yes, the waves may get scary and kill the visibility fast.
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Thanks Trux.
DDeden
