The Sicily Strait, an underwater relief connecting the Italian island with the Tunisian coasts, is not a geological barrier for the deep water circulation between eastern and western Mediterranean -which was always thought to be. Quite the contrary, the contribution of the eastern Mediterranean deep water flow towards the western one can reach 70%, according to a study recently published in the journal Process in Oceanography.

The new study profiles an hydrodynamic map -so far unknown- between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean Sea, and is led by Leopoldo Pena and Isabel Cacho, members of the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences of the UB. Other co-authors of the study are the experts Ester Garcia Solsona, Eduardo Paredes and Jose Pérez Asensio (UB research group on Marine Geosciences), Lucía Quirós Collazos, from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and Fabrizio Lirer, from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR-CNR, Italy).

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