## 4 Discussion  
The marine gravity anomalies in the area under investigation tended to have a direct impact on the bathymmet changes adjacent to the coast. These included major Bouguer gravity and free-air gravity anomalies ranging from \(-40\) to \(200\) mGal and \(-130\) to \(90\) mGal, respectively (Figure 2a,b). The interpretation of these anomalies with regard to the main bathymmetric features and geological tectonic setting countenance is presented herein. These essential gravity indicators referenced the Eratosthenes Seamount, Herodotus Basin, Levant Basin, Nile Delta cone and East Mediterranean Ridge, where the slope causes the bathymmetric and topographic features to vary over short distances (Figure 1b). Furthermore, the regional-residual isolation technique was applied to analyse the potential field data in this study. The polynomial trend surface technique was applied to separate the residual from the regional fields provided by the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) software [31]. Figure 3a,b shows the regional and residual gravity anomaly maps, respectively, which were created using a contour interval of \(10\) mGal for a clear display. Additionally, the regional-residual  
Figure 2: (**a**) Bouguer gravity map; (**b**) free-air gravity map; and (**c**) total intensity magnetic anomaly map of the area investigated. magnetic maps are shown in Figure 3c,d, respectively. The qualitative dissection of the marine gravity and magnetic anomalies revealed the following features:  
The gravity map (Figure 2a) displays the layer density distribution directly concerning the deposit sequence of the area under investigation. A general feature of the map is the major gravity anomalies spread inside, with the exclusion of the southern portion. A positive gravity value (200 mGal) was eminent at the northwestern portion of the study area, but a negative (\(-\)Ve) gravity value (\(-\)40 mGal) was found at the southern portion. Positive Bouguer anomalies predominated in the extended northeast-southwest direction together through a high of almost \(+\)200 mGal extending along the Herodotus abyssal plain. Lengthy anomalies were obvious and could be clearly identified as tight and raised gradient anomalies. The wide variation in the Bouguer gravity might be due to variation in the crust thickness, a property that concerns the Nile deep sea fan. The gravity anomaly map revealed additional marine features associated with geological structures at the Levant Basin, Nile deep sea fan, Herodotus Basin and Eratosthenes  
Figure 3: (**a,b**) Regional and residual gravity maps; (**c,d**) regional and residual magnetic maps of the area investigated. Seamount (Figure 2a). The study area was characterized by \(-\)Ve anomalies in the northeastern region of the Nile deep sea fan. Moreover, we observed a significant anomaly above the entrance of the Nile deep sea fan, which we concluded to be caused by the formation of deltaic deposits. Gravity anomaly maps show the isostatic stability of major scale structures found in geological basins (Figure 2b); the gravity anomaly map is high if the structure is only partially compensated for or not at all. The gravity anomaly map provides evidence of arranged tectonic structures at the regional and limited scale, thus revealing the influence of bathymetric and topographic features in an overall approach (Figure 1b). A nearly constant concave \(-\)Ve anomaly arrangement was observed spreading lengths from the northwest to the south at the middle portion of the study area (Figure 2b). The free-air anomalies and the bathymetric and topographic features exhibited numerous matches, i.e., the slopes of the free-air pattern were large patterns in the southeastern portion of the area (Figure 2b). The total intensity of the magnetic anomalies ranged from +44,800 to +41,400 nT, as shown in Figure 2c. In general, closer and extended shape features were present in the magnetic anomalies. The magnetic anomalies tended to be oriented in the NW-SE direction, coinciding with the bathymetric and topographic features.