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The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of the ocean is very deep, where the seabed is known as the abyssal plain. Seafloor spreading creates ...
Further out in the open ocean, they include underwater and deep sea features such as ocean rises and seamounts. The submerged surface has mountainous features, including a globe-spanning mid-ocean ridge system, as well as undersea volcanoes , [ 7 ] oceanic trenches , submarine canyons , oceanic plateaus and abyssal plains .
GEBCO is the only intergovernmental body with a mandate to map the whole ocean floor. At the beginning of the project, only 6 per cent of the world's ocean bottom had been surveyed to today's standards; as of June 2022, the project had recorded 23.4 per cent mapped. About 14,500,000 square kilometres (5,600,000 sq mi) of new bathymetric data ...
Next the transducers evolved to fan-shaped beams to produce a better "sonogram" or sonar image. In order to get closer to the bottom in deep water the side-scan transducers were placed in a "tow fish" and pulled by a tow cable. Up until the mid-1980s, commercial side scan images were produced on paper records.
A bathymetric chart is a type of isarithmic map that depicts the submerged bathymetry and physiographic features of ocean and sea bottoms. [1] Their primary purpose is to provide detailed depth contours of ocean topography as well as provide the size, shape and distribution of underwater features.
A similar incident involving a passenger ship occurred in 1992 when the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth 2 struck a submerged rock off Block Island in the Atlantic Ocean. [2] In November 1999, the semi-submersible, heavy-lift ship Mighty Servant 2 capsized and sank after hitting an uncharted single underwater isolated pinnacle of granite off Indonesia.
[18] [19] The bottom of the trench marks the boundary between the subducting and overriding plates, known as the basal plate boundary shear [20] or the subduction décollement. [2] The depth of the trench depends on the starting depth of the oceanic lithosphere as it begins its plunge into the trench, the angle at which the slab plunges, and ...
Depending on how it is defined, the aphotic zone of the ocean begins between depths of about 200 m (660 ft) to 800 m (2,600 ft) and extends to the ocean floor. [1] [2] [3] The majority of the ocean is aphotic, with the average depth of the sea being 4,267 m (13,999 ft) deep; the deepest part of the sea, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench ...