Sahara Sea

The Sahara Sea was the name of a hypothetical macro-engineering project which proposed flooding endorheic basins in the Sahara Desert with waters from the Atlantic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea. The goal of this unrealized project was to create an inland sea that would cover the substantial areas of the Sahara Desert which lie below sea level, bringing humid air, rain and agriculture deep into the desert.

The possibility of such a project was raised several times by different scientists and engineers during the late 19th century and early 20th century, primarily from European colonial powers in Africa. The concept of a flooded Sahara was also featured in novels of the time.

In 1877, British engineer Donald Mackenzie was the first to propose a Sahara Sea be created. Mackenzie proposed cutting a channel from Cape Juby in southern Morocco to a large basin and plain known as El Djouf. This basin was approximately 61 metres (200 ft) below sea level at its deepest, and would have created an inland sea 155,400 square kilometres (60,000 sq mi) in area. Indeed, geological evidence suggested that this basin had previously been connected to the Atlantic Ocean via a channel near Sakiet el-Hamra. It was further proposed that this inland sea, if augmented with an inland canal, could provide access to the Niger River. Mackenzie acknowledged that other desert basins in present-day Tunisia and Algeria shared below-sea-level profiles similar to those observed at El Djouf. These basins contained seasonally dry salt lakes, known as chotts.

François Elie Roudaire, a French geographer, and Ferdinand de Lesseps, a diplomat influential in the creation of the Suez Canal, proposed this area for the creation of an inland sea in 1878. Roudaire and de Lesseps proposed that a channel be cut from the Gulf of Gabès in the Mediterranean to the Chott el Fejej which would allow the sea to drain into these basins. They were not specific in the area such a sea would cover (although subsequent analyses suggested that it would be considerably smaller than Mackenzie's proposal at only 8,000 square kilometres (3,100 sq mi) in area), but argued that the new inland sea would improve the quality of weather on the European continent. The estimated cost of the Roudaire project was $30,000,000 at the time.

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