Exercise 2: The topography of the ocean floor.

Other mediterranean seas are the Australasian Mediterranean Sea in Southeast Asia and the American Mediterranean Sea. Both have more than one connection to the adjacent oceans and are therefore characterised by throughflow in the upper layer.

This map shows the American Mediterranean Sea. The Caribbean Current enters it in the southeast and continues into the Gulf of Mexico (1), where it leaves it as the Florida Current. The mediterranean character of the region is still obvious when we look at its topography. We see a series of deep basins separated by sills. Ventilation in the Yucatan Basin (2), Cayman Basin (3), Columbia Basin (4), Venezuela Basin (5) and Grenada Basin (6) is very sluggish.