The Molloy Deep (also known as the Molloy Hole) is a bathymetric feature in the

Fram Strait The Fram Strait is the passage between Greenland and Svalbard, located roughly between 77th parallel north, 77°N and 81st parallel north, 81°N latitudes and centered on the prime meridian. The Greenland Sea, Greenland and Norwegian Seas lie sou ...

, within the

Greenland Sea The Greenland Sea ( Danish: ''Grønlandshavet'') is a body of water that borders Greenland to the west, the Svalbard archipelago to the east, Fram Strait and the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Norwegian Sea and Iceland to the south. The Gre ...

east of Greenland and about west of

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

. It is the location of the deepest point in the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

. The Molloy Deep, Molloy Hole, Molloy Fracture Zone, and Molloy Ridge were named after Arthur E. Molloy, a

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...

research scientist who worked in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Arctic Oceans in the 1950s–1970s. The outer rim of the trench is at a depth of and contains about inside the rim, descending to approximately at its greatest depth. The basin floor measures about and is the deepest point in the Arctic Ocean. The only person to have reached the bottom of the Molloy Deep is American explorer

Victor Vescovo Victor Lance Vescovo (born February 10, 1966) is an American private equity investor, retired naval officer, sub-orbital spaceflight participant, and undersea explorer. He was a co-founder and managing partner of private equity company Insight ...

as part of his Five Deeps Expedition.

Topography

The Molloy Deep is a roughly rectangular, seismically active, extensional, sea-floor basin that lies between the northwestern tip of the Molloy Fracture Zone (a right-lateral, strike-slip fault) and the Spitsbergen Fracture Zone (also a right-lateral, strike-slip fault). These two fracture zones connect the actively spreading northern segment of the Mid-Atlantic Ocean ridge system called the Knipovich Ridge with the Lena Trough, an actively spreading mid-ocean ridge region north of the Spitsbergen Fracture Zone. The Lena Trough joins the southwestern end of the Arctic Ocean's Gakkel Ridge, which is the slowest-spreading mid-ocean ridge on Earth and which stretches across the entire Arctic Oceans’ Eurasian Basin.

Surveys

Limiting Factor to be prepared for a dive into the Atlantic Ocean

The Molloy Deep was discovered in September 1972 by the

USNS Hayes (T-AGOR-16) USNS ''Hayes'' (T-AGOR-16/T-AG-195) was a ''Hayes''-class oceanographic research ship acquired by the United States Navy in 1971. In 1992 she was reconfigured as an acoustics research ship and assigned to the Navy's program of acoustic noise red ...

, the first of a new class of catamaran-hulled oceanographic research vessels. The Molloy Deep, Molloy Hole, Molloy Fracture Zone, and Molloy Ridge were named after Arthur E. Molloy, a U.S. Navy research scientist who worked in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arctic Oceans in the 1950s–1970s.

Descents

The only person to reach the bottom of the Molloy Deep is

on 24 August 2019. The Five Deeps Expedition leader and chief submersible pilot, Vescovo, descended into the Molloy Deep in the Deep-Submergence Vehicle ''

Limiting Factor A limiting factor is a variable of a system that causes a noticeable change in output or another measure of a type of system. The limiting factor is in a pyramid shape of organisms going up from the producers to consumers and so on. A factor not l ...

'' (a Triton 36000/2 model submersible) from the support ship, the Deep Submersible Support Vessel '' DSSV Pressure Drop''. The Five Deeps Expedition established the depth of the Molloy Deep as ± by direct CTD pressure measurements. This is shallower than previous estimations using earlier technology with less precise bathymetric methods.

References

{{Reflist Lowest points of the World Ocean Oceanic trenches of the Arctic Ocean Oceanic basins of the Arctic Ocean Geography of the Arctic