Abu Qir Bay

The Abū Qīr Bay (sometimes transliterated Abukir Bay or Aboukir Bay, Khalīj Abū Qīr) is a spacious bay on the Mediterranean Sea near Alexandria in Egypt, lying between the Rosetta mouth of the Nile and the town of Abu Qir. The ancient cities of Canopus, Heracleion and Menouthis lie submerged beneath the waters of the bay. In 1798 it was the site of the Battle of the Nile, a naval battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the navy of the French First Republic. The bay contains a natural gas field, discovered in the 1970s.

Abu Qir Bay lies approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Alexandria, bounded to the southwest by the Abu Qir headland, on which lies the town of Abu Qir, and to the northeast by the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. The bay is a highly fertile Egyptian coastal region but suffers from acute eutrophication and pollution from untreated industrial and domestic waste. The ABU QIR Fertilizers and Chemicals Industries Company, a large producer of nitrogen fertilizer, is located on the bay.

Classical sources indicate that the Canopic branch of the Nile Delta once entered the sea in the vicinity of Heracleion or the eastern part of Canopus. A combination of Islamic texts and investigation using geoarchaeology suggest that this branch was still in existence in the eighth century, when a major inundation caused eastern Canopus to sink into the bay. The Canopic branch subsequently declined and eventually became closed. Land in the area of Canopus was subject to rising sea levels, earthquakes, tsunamis, and large parts of it seem to have already succumbed to soil liquefaction sometime at the end of the 2nd century BC, becoming submerged.

Data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).