A relatively shallow (up to 200m) continental shelf extends over the northern part of the Black Sea. Beyond that is the Euxine Abyssal Plain of the Black Sea with depths ranging from 2,000 to 2,200 m. The deepest measured point is 2,216 metres, located south of Yalta in Crimea.
The Sea of Azov, connected to the Black Sea by the Strait of Kerch, is the shallowest sea in the world, with a maximum depth of 15 meters.
To get from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean a ship has to pass through the Bosphorus (which ranges from very shallow to 110m with and average of around 65m) and into the Sea of Marmara and then the Dardanelles Strait (55 to 90m deep) and from there out into the Aegean and the Mediterranean.
The Euxine Abyssal Plain gets its name from the archaic name for the Black Sea, from Latin Pontus Euxinus, from Greek Pontos Euxenios, literally ‘the hospitable sea,’ originally Pontos Axeinos, ‘the not-clear or the inhospitable sea.’