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We began with the obvious, a search on "red sea." But the results were so plentiful and diverse that we realized we needed to focus our search, so we rephrased your question to read "why is the red sea red." Our revised search yielded an abundance of sites targeting tourists and scuba divers. Browsing through the results, we came across a destination guide, created by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, which offered one answer. Author E.M. Forster stated that the "exquisite corridor of tinted mountains and radiant water" was named Mare Rostrum (Latin for Red Sea) by early travelers
because of the region's reddish mineral-rich mountains. The always reliable Encyclopedia Britannica offered a detailed, descriptive article, as well as another answer. The article suggests that the Red Sea is named not for the glowing color of its coastal mountains, but rather for an occasional bloom of Trichodesmium erythraeum algae, which clouds and muddies the usually translucent blue-green waters. A 1646 chapter from English author and physician Sir Thomas Browne reports that Sir Walter Raleigh believed the unusual color of the water to be "no more then a seeming rednesse." Raleigh also observed that the water varied, "in some places
it is very green, in others white and yellow, according to the colour of the earth or sand at the bottome." Although our sources may vary on the explanation for the unique hue of the sea, they all agree that the answer to your question is no -- the Red Sea is not really red.
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