Halmyric Environments

Abstract

In most areas of the world ocean, lagoons, nearshore ponds and estuaries are predominantly brackish, i.e. with variable low salinities. In the Levant and along the whole Red Sea, such littoral waterbodies almost always have variable and higher-than-sea water salinities. A wider term is needed for the waters of changing and deviating salinities, irrespective of the sense of this deviation. We propose an old term, used many years ago by French hydrobiologists, namely “Halmyrology” (after “Halmyris”, the classical Greek name of a complex of saline and brackish lagoons south of the Delta of the Danube).