The Drake Passage is the body of water between South America's

Cape Horn Cape Horn (, ) is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island. Although not the most southerly point of South America (which is Águila Islet), Cape Horn marks the nor ...

, Chile, Argentina, and the

South Shetland Islands The South Shetland Islands are a group of List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands, Antarctic islands located in the Drake Passage with a total area of . They lie about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, and between southwest of the n ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean (

Scotia Sea The Scotia Sea is a sea located at the northern edge of the Southern Ocean at its boundary with the South Atlantic Ocean. It is bounded on the west by the Drake Passage and on the north, east, and south by the Scotia Arc, an undersea ridge and is ...

) with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60th parallel south, 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is the seco ...

. The passage is named after the 16th-century English explorer and

privateer A privateer is a private person or vessel which engages in commerce raiding under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign o ...

Sir Francis Drake Sir Francis Drake ( 1540 – 28 January 1596) was an English Exploration, explorer and privateer best known for making the Francis Drake's circumnavigation, second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580 (bein ...

. The Drake Passage is considered one of the most treacherous voyages for ships to make. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which runs through it, meets no resistance from any landmass, and waves top , giving it a reputation for being "the most powerful convergence of seas". As the Drake Passage is the narrowest passage (

choke point In military strategy, a choke point (or chokepoint), or sometimes bottleneck, is a geographical feature on land such as a valley, defile or bridge, or maritime passage through a critical waterway such as a strait, which an armed force is for ...

) around Antarctica, its existence and shape strongly influence the circulation of water around Antarctica and the global oceanic circulation, as well as the global climate. The

bathymetry Bathymetry (; ) is the study of underwater depth of ocean floors ('' seabed topography''), river floors, or lake floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The first recorded evidence of wate ...

of the Drake Passage plays an important role in the global mixing of oceanic water. Part of the water body is named

Southern Zone Sea The Sea of the Southern Zone () or Southern Zone Sea is the name given by Argentina and Chile to the maritime area whose boundaries were undefined, located south of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. This maritime space was subject to delimitat ...

History

In 1525, Spanish navigator

Francisco de Hoces Francisco de Hoces (died 1526) was a Spanish sailor who in 1525 joined the Loaísa Expedition to the Spice Islands as commander of the vessel ''San Lesmes''. In January 1526, the ''San Lesmes'' was blown by a gale southwards from the eastern m ...

discovered the Drake Passage while sailing south from the entrance of the

Strait of Magellan The Strait of Magellan (), also called the Straits of Magellan, is a navigable sea route in southern Chile separating mainland South America to the north and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago to the south. Considered the most important natura ...

.Oyarzun, Javier, ''Expediciones españolas al Estrecho de Magallanes y Tierra de Fuego'', 1976, Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica Because of this, the Drake Passage is referred to as the Mar de Hoces (Sea of Hoces) in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

maps and sources, while almost always in the rest of the

Spanish-speaking countries The following is a list of countries where Spanish is an official language, plus several countries where Spanish language, Spanish or any language closely related to it, is an important or significant language. There are 20 UN member states whe ...

it is mostly known as ''Pasaje de Drake'' (in Argentina, mainly), or ''Paso Drake'' (in Chile, mainly). The passage received its English name from

during his raiding expedition. After passing in 1578 through the Strait of Magellan with ''Marigold'', ''Elizabeth'', and his

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of navy, naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically ...

Golden Hind ''Golden Hind'' was a galleon captained by Francis Drake in his circumnavigation of the world between 1577 and 1580. She was originally known as ''Pelican,'' but Drake renamed her mid-voyage in 1578, in honour of his patron, Sir Christopher Ha ...

'', Drake entered the Pacific Ocean and was blown far south in a tempest. ''Marigold'' was lost and ''Elizabeth'' abandoned the fleet. Only Drake's ''Golden Hind'' entered the passage. This incident demonstrated to the English that there was open water south of South America. In 1616, Dutch navigator

Willem Schouten Willem Cornelisz Schouten (1625) was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean. Biography Willem Cornelisz Schouten was born around 1567 in Hoorn, Holland, Seve ...

became the first to sail around

and through the Drake Passage. On December 25, 2019, a crew of six explorers successfully rowed across the passage, becoming the first in history to do so. This accomplishment became the subject of a 2020 documentary, ''

The Impossible Row ''The Impossible Row'' is a documentary from the Discovery Channel. It follows explorers as they row across the Drake Passage and become the first in history to do so. The journey took 12 days and ended on December 25, 2019 with the six crew memb ...

''.

Geography

The Drake Passage opened when Antarctica separated from South America due to

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

, however, there is much debate about when this occurred, with estimates ranging from 49 to 17 million years ago. The Shackleton fracture zone is under the sea on the Drake Passage zone. The opening had a major effect on the global oceans due to deep currents like the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). This opening could have been a primary cause of changes in global circulation and climate, as well as the rapid expansion of

Antarctic ice sheet The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of and an average thickness of over . It is the largest of Earth's two current ice sheets, containing of ice, which is equivalent to 61% of ...

s, because, as Antarctica was encircled by ocean currents, it was cut off from receiving heat from warmer regions. The passage between

and

Livingston Island Livingston Island (Russian name ''Smolensk'', ) is an Antarctic island in the Southern Ocean, part of the South Shetland Islands, South Shetlands Archipelago, a group of List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands, Antarctic islands north of the ...

is the shortest crossing from Antarctica to another landmass. The boundary between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is sometimes taken to be a line drawn from Cape Horn to Snow Island ( north of mainland Antarctica), though the

International Hydrographic Organization The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) (French: ''Organisation Hydrographique Internationale'') is an intergovernmental organization representing hydrography. the IHO comprised 102 member states. A principal aim of the IHO is to ...

defines it as the meridian that passes through Cape Horn: 67° 16′ W. Both lines lie within the Drake Passage. The other two passages around the southern extremity of South America — the

and the

Beagle Channel Beagle Channel (; Yahgan language, Yahgan: ''Onašaga'') is a strait in the Tierra del Fuego, Tierra del Fuego Archipelago, on the extreme southern tip of South America between Chile and Argentina. The channel separates the larger main island of I ...

— have frequent

narrows A narrows or narrow (used interchangeably but usually in the plural form), is a restricted land or water passage. Most commonly a narrows is a strait, though it can also be a water gap. A narrows may form where a stream passes through a tilte ...

, leaving little maneuvering room for a ship, as well as unpredictable winds and tidal currents. Most sailing ships thus prefer the Drake Passage, which is open water for hundreds of miles. No significant land sits at the latitudes of the Drake Passage. This is important to the unimpeded eastward flow of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which carries a huge volume of water through the passage and around Antarctica. The passage hosts whales, dolphins, and

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adaptation, adapted to life within the marine ecosystem, marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent ...

s including

giant petrel Giant petrels form a genus, ''Macronectes'', from the family Procellariidae, which consists of two living and one extinct species. They are the largest birds in this family. Both extant species in the genus are native to the Southern Hemisphere. ...

s, other

petrel Petrels are tube-nosed seabirds in the phylogenetic order Procellariiformes. Description Petrels are a monophyletic group of marine seabirds, sharing a characteristic of a nostril arrangement that results in the name "tubenoses". Petrels enco ...

albatross Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds related to the procellariids, storm petrels, and diving petrels in the order Procellariiformes (the tubenoses). They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Paci ...

es, and

penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

Importance in physical oceanography

The presence of the Drake Passageway allows the three main ocean basins (Atlantic, Pacific and Southern) to be connected via the Antarctic Circumpolar current (ACC), the strongest oceanic current, with an estimated transport of 100–150 Sv (

Sverdrup In oceanography, the sverdrup (symbol: Sv) is a non- SI metric unit of volumetric flow rate, with equal to . It is equivalent to the SI derived unit cubic hectometer per second (symbol: hm3/s or hm3⋅s−1): is equal to . It is used almost ...

s, million m³/s). This flow is the only large-scale exchange occurring between the global oceans, and the Drake passage is the narrowest passage on its flow around Antarctica. As such, a significant amount of research has been done in understanding how the shape of the Drake passage (

and width) affects the global climate.

Oceanic and climate interactions

Major features of the modern ocean's temperature and salinity fields, including the overall thermal asymmetry between the hemispheres, the relative saltiness of deep water formed in the northern hemisphere, and the existence of a transequatorial conveyor circulation, develop after Drake Passage is opened. Flow from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the other ocean basins

Flow from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the other ocean basins

The importance of an open Drake Passage extends farther than the

latitudes. The

Roaring Forties The Roaring Forties are strong westerlies, westerly winds that occur in the Southern Hemisphere, generally between the latitudes of 40th parallel south, 40° and 50th parallel south, 50° south. The strong eastward air currents are caused by ...

and the Furious Fifties blow around Antarctica and drive the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). As a result of

Ekman Transport Ekman transport is part of Ekman motion theory, first investigated in 1902 by Vagn Walfrid Ekman. Winds are the main source of energy for ocean circulation, and Ekman transport is a component of wind-driven ocean current. Ekman transport occurs w ...

, water gets transported northward from the ACC (on the left-hand side while facing the stream direction). Using a Lagrangian approach, water parcels passing through the Drake Passage can be followed in their journey in the oceans. Around 23 Sv of water is transported from the Drake Passage to the equator, mainly in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This value is not far from the

Gulf Stream The Gulf Stream is a warm and swift Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and flows through the Straits of Florida and up the eastern coastline of the United States, then veers east near 36°N latitude (North Carolin ...

transport in the

Florida Strait The Straits of Florida, Florida Straits, or Florida Strait () is a strait located south-southeast of the North American mainland, generally accepted to be between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, and between the Florida Keys (U.S.) an ...

(33 Sv), but is an order of magnitude lower than the transport of the ACC (100–150 Sv). Water transported from the Southern Ocean to the Northern Hemisphere contributes to the global

mass balance In physics, a mass balance, also called a material balance, is an application of conservation of mass to the analysis of physical systems. By accounting for material entering and leaving a system, mass flows can be identified which might have ...

and permits the meridional circulation across the oceans. Several studies have linked the current shape of the Drake Passage to an effective

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the main ocean current system in the Atlantic Ocean.IPCC, 2021Annex VII: Glossary [Matthews, J.B.R., V. Möller, R. van Diemen, J.S. Fuglestvedt, V. Masson-Delmotte, C. Méndez, S. Sem ...

(AMOC). Models have been run with different widths and depths of the Drake Passage, and consequent changes in the global oceanic circulation and temperature distribution have been analyzed: It appears that the "conveyor belt" of the global

thermohaline circulation Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale Ocean current, ocean circulation driven by global density gradients formed by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. The name ''thermohaline'' is derived from ''wikt:thermo-, thermo-'', r ...

appears only in presence of an open Drake Passage, subject to Wind stress, wind forcing. With a closed Drake Passage, there is no North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) cell, and no ACC. With a shallower Drake Passage, a weak ACC appears, but still no NADW cell. Experiments opening drake passage

It has also been shown that present-day distribution of

dissolved inorganic carbon Dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is the sum of the aqueous species of inorganic carbon in a solution. Carbon compounds can be distinguished as either organic or inorganic, and as dissolved or particulate, depending on their composition. Organic c ...

can be obtained only with an open Drake Passage. Regarding the

global surface temperature Global surface temperature (GST) is the average temperature of Earth's surface. More precisely, it is the weighted average of the temperatures over the ocean and land. The former is also called sea surface temperature and the latter is called ...

, an open (and sufficiently deep) Drake Passage cools the Southern Ocean and warms the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. The isolation of Antarctica by the ACC (that can flow only with an open Drake Passage) is credited by many researchers with causing the glaciation of the continent and global cooling in the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

epoch.

Turbulence and mixing

Diapycnal mixing is the process by which different layers of a stratified fluid mix. It directly affects vertical gradients, thus it is of great importance to all gradient-driven types of transport and circulation (including

). Mixing drives the global thermohaline circulation; without internal mixing, cooler water would never rise above warmer water, and there would be no density (

buoyancy Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is the force exerted by a fluid opposing the weight of a partially or fully immersed object (which may be also be a parcel of fluid). In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of t ...

)-driven circulation. However, mixing in the interior of most of the ocean is thought to be ten times weaker than required to support the global circulation. It has been hypothesised that the extra-mixing can be ascribed to breaking of

internal wave Internal waves are gravity waves that oscillate within a fluid medium, rather than on its surface. To exist, the fluid must be stratified: the density must change (continuously or discontinuously) with depth/height due to changes, for example, in ...

s (

Lee wave In meteorology, lee waves are atmospheric stationary waves. The most common form is mountain waves, which are atmospheric internal gravity waves. These were discovered in 1933 by two German glider pilots, Hans Deutschmann and Wolf Hirth, abov ...

s). When a stratified fluid reaches an internal obstacle, a wave is created that can eventually break, mixing the fluid's layers. It has been estimated that the diapycnal diffusivity in the Drake Passage is ~20 times the value immediately to the west in the Pacific sector of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). Much of the energy that is dissipated through internal wave breaking (around 20% of the wind energy put into the ocean) is dissipated in the Southern Ocean. In short, without the coarse topography in the depths of the Drake Passage, oceanic internal mixing would be weaker, and the global circulation would be affected. DensityDrivenCirculation

Historical importance in oceanographic observations

Worldwide satellite measurements of oceanic properties have been available since the 1980s. Before then, data could be only gathered through oceanic ships taking direct measurements. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) has been (and is) surveyed making repeated transects. South America and the

Antarctic Peninsula The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martin in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica. ...

constrain the ACC in the Drake Passage; the convenience of measuring the ACC across the passage lays in the clear boundaries of the current in that stripe. Even after the advent of

satellite altimetry Satellite geodesy is geodesy by means of artificial satellites—the measurement of the form and dimensions of Earth, the location of objects on its surface and the figure of the Earth's gravity field by means of artificial satellite techniques. ...

data, direct observations in the Drake Passage have not lost their exceptionality. The relative shallowness and narrowness of the passage makes it particularly suitable to assess the validity of horizontally ''and'' vertically changing quantities (such as velocity in Ekman's theory). In addition, the strength of the ACC makes meanders and pinching cold-core cyclonic rings easier to observe.

Fauna

Wildlife in the Drake Passage includes the following species:

Birds

Cetaceans

Gallery

File:Drake2.JPG, Rough seas are common in the Drake Passage File:Drake3.JPG, Tourists watch whales in the Drake Passage File:Drake4.JPG, A light-mantled sooty albatross flying over the Drake Passage File:Drake5.JPG,

Humpback whale The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the monotypic taxon, only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh u ...

s are a common sight in the Drake Passage File:Hourglas dolphin crop.jpg,

Hourglass dolphin The hourglass dolphin (''Lagenorhynchus cruciger'') is a small dolphin in the family Delphinidae that inhabits offshore Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters. It is commonly seen from ships crossing the Drake Passage but has a circumpolar distribut ...

s leaping in the Passage Image:Drake Passage - Lambert Azimuthal projection.png, Drake Passage or ''Mar de Hoces'' between

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

and

Image:Drake Passage - Orthographic projection.png, Drake Passage

Notable people

* Jamie Douglas-Hamilton (living), adventurer *

(deceased), sailor

References

External links

National Oceanography Centre, Southampton page of the important and complex bathymetry of the Passage

A NASA image of an eddy in the Passage

{{Coord, 58, 35, S, 65, 54, W, type:waterbody_scale:10000000, display=title Francis Drake Straits of Chile Straits of Antarctica Bodies of water of Magallanes Region Landforms of Tierra del Fuego Province, Argentina Borders of Chile Antarctic region