Tides

Sorry if this has been asked before:

I was thinking today about how tides are much less pronounced in the mediterrainian. Why is this affect of the lunar sphere so suppressed in this area? Is it a magic effect? Faerie Pact? Some legacy of the Roman empire? Some affect of the montheistic faiths, and eventually the Atlantic tides will die as more littoral communities worship the one true gods?

Are there any other lunar sphere effects that might be suppressed clued in by this one?

What cool ideas can you think of from this?

Bob

Heck, the question itself is worthy of a story.
What sort of effort would it take to locate and speak to “The Spirit of the Mediterranean Sea”?
"... oh, and while I have your attention ... "

Such is the Will of the Lord. (Why, the Lord wills the tides to be less, who knows?)

The sea god of the tide of the Mediterranean was maimed in the Titanomachy, or trapped when Atlantis was sunk, or otherwise withdrawn from the world.

Oceanus, the Titan, rules the River Ocean (the Atlantic and Indian), and is more powerful there. Poseidon rules the Mediterranean directly and is less rough. Or Oceanus, being trapped in Tartarus, isn't there to calm the waters as much as Poseidon does (although the sway of Poseidon should be greatly diminished, too).

Oceanus desires, and follows after, Selene. Poseidon is interested in other nymphs, and his wife.

The real reason, I believe, is that the mass of the Mediterranean is less than the mass of an ocean. Magi might argue this, albeit in Form terms: "The attractive influence of the Lunar sphere, concentrated in the Lunar Body, is such that the Sphere of Aquam is attracted to the Aetheric material of the Lunar Body most strongly, and enough so that the main Bodies of Aquam rise up to the utter limits of their ability and natural range of their natural level. So, too, we may say is the Sphere of Terram, attracted to the Lunar Body, but the Terram Sphere is not in the main a fluid body. To test this hypothesis, a mage might seek to measure whether the Spheres of Auram and Ignem also follow the attraction of Luna in the same pattern as the tide, a Tide of the Air and Fire, one might say. If it is so, we have derived a quality of the mysterious Form Aether... why are all the Criamon looking at me like that?"

No, not really because of that. The Bay of Fundy has far less mass than the Mediterranean, let alone any of the oceans. Yet its tides are roughly 50 feet (roughly 15 m) from low to high. My understanding of the Bay of Fundy is that resonance is the primary driver and that the funneling shape is secondary. The Mediterranean doesn't really have anything to increase its tides in general, mostly just restrictions on water flow on a world-wide scale. So it would seem the tides should be small, and spots with good magnification of the tides can bring them back to a typical size. Here is a nice article about various water flows: adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1963IrAJ....6...12M

The tides on the Bay of Fundy are uh, visible. I grew up there and to this day, 20ish years after moving away, water levels that don't move significantly over 6 or so hours and rivers that don't flow upstream instead of down on occasion still seems a little unnatural. :confused:

Falke, the Prima of House Bjornaer, every year casts a mighty ritual to thaw the ice of the Baltic Sea (GotF, page 96). Maybe someone else is doing something similar to reduce the range of the mediterranean tide.