In your article "Support is drying up for Noah's flood filling the Black Sea" (News of the Week by R. A. Kerr, 17 August 2007, p. 886) you refer to Richard Hiscott and Ali Aksu of Memorial University of Newfoundland and colleagues who have reported a delta south of the Bosporus built by outflowing waters 10,000 years ago (1). This article has been found wanting in analyses published by Turkish scientists, who like other international countries are often forgotten by United States or English-native writers. An interpretation based on high-resolution seismic stratigraphy has been published by E. Gökaşan et al. on delta formation at the southern entrance of the Istanbul Strait (2). It shows that the delta described by Aksu, Hiscott, and co-authors is the product of a Turkish river flowing to the Marmara Sea. The northern Black Sea shallow fan delta has already been presented by D. Di Ioro et al. (3) and confirmed by G. Lericolais et al. (4). Even though Hiscot et al. do not agree that there was a late connection of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, they have found evidence in cores recovered on the Black Sea Turkish shelf of a late salinization of the Black Sea that was obtained from their studies conducted (the one you are quoting). They explain that the Ostracoda of Caspian affinity indicates ~5 salinity until ~7.5 ka. Dinocysts and foraminifera confirm a low but rising salinity at no later than ~8.6 ka, and in 2007 a first major pulse of marine waters was recorded at around 8.46 ka BP by Marret et al. They propose a complicated explanation to refute a late reconnection as evidenced by relics, coastal dunes, and wave-cut terraces (Lericolais et al. 2007a, 2007b). This is consistent with the results obtained in 1975 by Maheim and Chan suggesting that during the isolation of the Black Sea in the LGM (Neoeuxinian) there was a relatively homogeneous chlorine concentration of about 3.5 g/kg, compared with more than 12 g/kg in the present-day bottom water.
I hope that this will help to refine the overview of ongoing studies carried out in the Black Sea. It is difficult to explain how the discovered features were set without a Black Sea level having been reduced to -100 m during the period between 11000 and 8000 years C14 BP.
Gilles Lericolais
European Coodinator of the ASSEMBLAGE European project on the assessment of the Quaternary sedimentary system of the Black Sea, Ifremer, Plouzané, France.
References
1. R. N. Hiscott et al, Quaternary International 167, 19 (June 2007).
2. E. Gökaşan et al., Geo-Marine Letters 25, 370 (2005).
3. D. Di Ioro, H. Yüce, Journal of Geophysical Research 104, 3091 (1999).
4. G. Lericolais et al., EOS transactions (2002).
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