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Seamount
A seamount is a large geologic landform that rises from the ocean floor that does not reach to the water's surface (sea level), and thus is not an island, islet or cliff-rock. Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from the seafloor to in height. They are defined by oceanographers as independent features that rise to at least above the seafloor, characteristically of conical form.IHO, 2008. Standardization of Undersea Feature Names: Guidelines Proposal form Terminology, 4th ed. International Hydrographic Organization and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, Monaco. The peaks are often found hundreds to thousands of meters below the surface, and are therefore considered to be within the deep sea. During their evolution over geologic time, the largest seamounts may reach the sea surface where wave action erodes the summit to form a flat surface. After they have subsided and sunk below the sea surface such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount
Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount (previously known as Lōʻihi) is an active submarine volcano about off the southeast coast of the island of Hawaii. The top of the seamount is about below sea level. This seamount is on the flank of Mauna Loa, the largest shield volcano on Earth. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the newest volcano in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, a string of volcanoes that stretches about northwest of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Unlike most active volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that make up the active plate margins on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Kamaʻehuakanaloa and the other volcanoes of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain are hotspot volcanoes and formed well away from the nearest plate boundary. Volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands arise from the Hawaii hotspot, and as the youngest volcano in the chain, Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the only Hawaiian volcano in the deep submarine preshield stage of development. Kamaʻehuakanaloa began forming around 400,000 years ago and is expected ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guyot
In marine geology, a guyot (pronounced ), also known as a tablemount, is an isolated underwater volcanic mountain (seamount) with a flat top more than below the surface of the sea. The diameters of these flat summits can exceed .Guyot ''Encyclopædia Britannica Online'', 2010. Retrieved January 14, 2010. Guyots are most commonly found in the , but they have been identified in all the oceans except the . History Guyots were first recognized in 1945 by |
Bottom Trawling
Bottom trawling is trawling (towing a trawl, which is a fishing net) along the seafloor. It is also referred to as "dragging". The scientific community divides bottom trawling into benthic trawling and demersal trawling. Benthic trawling is towing a net at the very bottom of the ocean and demersal trawling is towing a net just above the benthic zone. Bottom trawling can be contrasted with midwater trawling (also known as pelagic trawling), where a net is towed higher in the water column. Midwater trawling catches pelagic fish such as anchovies and mackerel, whereas bottom trawling targets both bottom-living fish (groundfish) and semi-pelagic species such as cod, squid, shrimp, and rockfish. Trawling is done by a trawler, which can be a small open boat with only or a large factory trawler with . Bottom trawling can be carried out by one trawler or by two trawlers fishing cooperatively ( pair trawling). Global catch from bottom trawling has been estimated at over 30 million to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bear Seamount
The Bear Seamount is a guyot or flat-topped underwater volcano in the Atlantic Ocean. It is the oldest of the New England Seamounts, which was active more than 100 million years ago. It was formed when the North American Plate moved over the New England hotspot. It is located inside the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which was proclaimed by President of the United States Barack Obama to protect the seamount's biodiversity. Formation The Bear Seamount is the first guyot in a chain of about 30 extinct volcanoes extending in a straight line south-eastwards from the edge of the continental shelf near Woods Hole, Massachusetts to north-east of Bermuda. These seamounts resulted from the movement of a mantle plume hotspot. This hotspot is now under the Great Meteor Seamount. The chain rises about above the surrounding Sohm Abyssal Plain. Over time they have been eroded and have developed flat table-like summits surrounded by slopes with an inclination of ab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muirfield Seamount
The Muirfield Seamount is a submarine mountain located in the Indian Ocean approximately 130 kilometres (70 nautical miles) southwest of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The Cocos Islands are an Australian territory, and therefore the Muirfield Seamount is within Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Muirfield Seamount is a submerged archipelago, approximately in diameter and below the surface of the sea. A 1999 biological survey of the seamount performed by the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) revealed that the area is depauperate. The Muirfield Seamount was discovered accidentally in 1973 when the cargo ship MV ''Muirfield'' (a merchant vessel named after Muirfield, Scotland) was underway in waters charted at a depth of greater than , when she suddenly struck an unknown object, resulting in extensive damage to her keel.Calder, Nigel. ''How to Read a Navigational Chart: A Complete Guide to the Symbols, Abbreviations, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mantle Plume
A mantle plume is a proposed mechanism of convection within the Earth's mantle, hypothesized to explain anomalous volcanism. Because the plume head partially melts on reaching shallow depths, a plume is often invoked as the cause of volcanic hotspots, such as Hawaii or Iceland, and large igneous provinces such as the Deccan and Siberian Traps. Some such volcanic regions lie far from tectonic plate boundaries, while others represent unusually large-volume volcanism near plate boundaries. Concepts Mantle plumes were first proposed by J. Tuzo Wilson in 1963 and further developed by W. Jason Morgan in 1971 and 1972. A mantle plume is posited to exist where super-heated material forms ( nucleates) at the core-mantle boundary and rises through the Earth's mantle. Rather than a continuous stream, plumes should be viewed as a series of hot bubbles of material. Reaching the brittle upper Earth's crust they form diapirs. These diapirs are "hotspots" in the crust. In particular, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Islet
An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanent or tidal (i.e. surfaced reef or seamount); and may exist in the sea, lakes, rivers or any other sizeable bodies of water. Definition As suggested by its origin ''islette'', an Old French diminutive of "isle", use of the term implies small size, but little attention is given to drawing an upper limit on its applicability. The World Landforms website says, "An islet landform is generally considered to be a rock or small island that has little vegetation and cannot sustain human habitation", and further that size may vary from a few square feet to several square miles, with no specific rule pertaining to size. Other terms * Ait (/eɪt/, like eight) or eyot (/aɪ(ə)t, eɪt/), a small island. It is especially used to refer t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volcano
A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging, and most are found underwater. For example, a mid-ocean ridge, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates whereas the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's plates, such as in the East African Rift and the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Rio Grande rift in North America. Volcanism away from plate boundaries has been postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs from the core–mantle boundary, deep in the Earth. This results in hotspot volcanism, of which the Hawaiian hotspot is an example. Volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Island
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. Sedimentary islands in the Ganges delta are called chars. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands, such as the Philippines, is referred to as an archipelago. There are two main types of islands in the sea: continental and oceanic. There are also artificial islands, which are man-made. Etymology The word ''island'' derives from Middle English ''iland'', from Old English ''igland'' (from ''ig'' or ''ieg'', similarly meaning 'island' when used independently, and -land carrying its contemporary meaning; cf. Dutch ''eiland'' ("island"), German ''Eiland'' ("small island")). However, the spelling of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands ( haw, Nā Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Formerly the group was known to Europeans and Americans as the Sandwich Islands, a name that James Cook chose in honor of the 4th Earl of Sandwich, the then First Lord of the Admiralty. Cook came across the islands by chance when crossing the Pacific Ocean on his Third Voyage in 1778, on board HMS ''Resolution''; he was later killed on the islands on a return visit. The contemporary name of the islands, dating from the 1840s, is derived from the name of the largest island, Hawaii Island. Hawaii sits on the Pacific Plate and is the only U.S. state that is not geographically connected to North America. It is part of the Polynesia subregion of Oceania. The state of Hawaii occupies the archipelago almost in its entirety (inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ocean Floor
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 mid-ocean ridges along the center line of major ocean basins, where the seabed is slightly shallower than the surrounding abyssal plain. From the abyssal plain, the seabed slopes upward toward the continents and becomes, in order from deep to shallow, the continental rise, slope, and shelf. The depth within the seabed itself, such as the depth down through a sediment core, is known as the “depth below seafloor.” The ecological environment of the seabed and the deepest waters are collectively known, as a habitat for creatures, as the “benthos.” Most of the seabed throughout the world's oceans is covered in layers of marine sediments ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orange Roughy
The orange roughy (''Hoplostethus atlanticus''), also known as the red roughy, slimehead and deep sea perch, is a relatively large deep-sea fish belonging to the slimehead family (Trachichthyidae). The UK Marine Conservation Society has categorized orange roughy as "vulnerable to exploitation". It is found in , deep (bathypelagic, ) waters of the Western Pacific Ocean, eastern Atlantic Ocean (from Iceland to Morocco; and from Walvis Bay, Namibia, to off Durban, South Africa), Indo-Pacific (off New Zealand and Australia), and in the eastern Pacific off Chile. The orange roughy is notable for its extraordinary lifespan, attaining over 200 years. It is important to commercial deep-trawl fisheries. The fish is a bright, brick-red color, fading to a yellowish-orange after death. Like other slimeheads, orange roughy is slow-growing and late to mature, resulting in a very low resilience, making them extremely susceptible to overfishing. Many stocks (especially those off New Zealand and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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