Abstract
Still on board our hover car, in this chapter we will explore the deep ocean’s submarine canyons, seamounts, plateaus, deep ocean trenches, and the mid-ocean ridge. We will meet pioneer marine geologist Francis Shepard and learn how submarine canyons are formed by underwater landslides. We will learn that there is a connection between the testing of nuclear bombs in the Pacific and Charles Darwin’s theory for the formation of coral atolls. We will learn about Zealandia, the 8th undiscovered continent. We will ponder what creatures inhabit deep-sea sediments leaving only traces in the mud of their existence and what happens to its body when a whale dies. Will humans mine manganese nodule deposits on the deep ocean floor, knowing that once destroyed this habitat will never recover? To mine or not to mine – it is a moral dilemma.
“In addition to a gentle, voluminous, and un-relenting snowfall of clay and ooze the ocean floor intermittently receives consignments of a large size: rocks plucked from the land and later dropped from melting ice- bergs; stomach stones disgorged by sea lions; rocks borne to sea by rotting giant algae; garbage, paper, radioactively contaminated tools and waste; junk, wrecks from peace and war; artillery projectiles; clinkers from coal- burning steamships; ballast; telephone and telegraph cables; beer bottles, tin cans and much more, imaginable, virtually unimaginable, and sometimes, unmentionable.”
Bruce Heezen and Charles D. Hollister
The Face of the Deep, 1971
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Shepard (1948).
- 2.
Piper et al. (1999).
- 3.
Harris and Whiteway (2011).
- 4.
Hovland (2008).
- 5.
Puig et al. (2012).
- 6.
- 7.
Carey et al. (2014).
- 8.
Cairns (2007).
- 9.
Koslow et al. (2015).
- 10.
Sumaila et al. (2015).
- 11.
Frey et al. (2000).
- 12.
Harris (2011).
- 13.
Smith and Baco (2003).
- 14.
Broecker (2003).
- 15.
- 16.
Purser et al. (2016).
- 17.
Marsh et al. (2018).
- 18.
Corliss et al. (1979).
- 19.
Salinas-de-León et al. (2018).
- 20.
Van Dover et al. (2017).
References
Broecker, W. S. (2003). The oceanic CaCO3 cycle. In H. D. Holland & K. K. Turekian (Eds.), Treatise on geochemistry (pp. 529–549). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Cairns, S. D. (2007). Deep-water corals: An overview with special reference to diversity and distribution of deep-water scleractinian corals. Bulletin of Marine Science, 81, 311–322.
Carey, R. J., Wysoczanski, R., Wunderman, R., & Jutzeler, M. (2014). Discovery of the largest historic silicic submarine eruption. Eos, 95, 157–164.
Corliss, J. B., Dymond, J., Gordon, L. I., Edmond, J. M., von Herzen, R. P., Ballard, R. D., Green, K., Williams, D., Bainbridge, A., Crane, K., & van Andel, T. H. (1979). Submarine thermal springs on the Galapagos rift. Science, 203, 1073–1083.
Frey, F. A., Coffin, M. F., Wallace, P. J., Weis, D., Zhao, X., Wise, S. W., Wähnert, V., Teagle, D. A. H., Saccocia, P. J., Reusch, D. N., Pringle, M. S., Nicolaysen, K. E., Neal, C. R., Müller, R. D., Moore, C. L., Mahoney, J. J., Keszthelyi, L., Inokuchi, H., Duncan, R. A., Delius, H., Damuth, J. E., Damasceno, D., Coxall, H. K., Borre, M. K., Boehm, F., Barling, J., Arndt, N. T., & Antretter, M. (2000). Origin and evolution of a submarine large igneous province: The Kerguelen plateau and Broken Ridge, southern Indian Ocean. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 176(1), 73–89.
Harris, P. T. (2011). Benthic environments of the Lord Howe rise submarine plateau: Introduction to the special volume. Deep Sea Research Part II, 58, 883–888.
Harris, P. T., & Whiteway, T. (2011). Global distribution of large submarine canyons: Geomorphic differences between active and passive continental margins. Marine Geology, 285, 69–86.
Harris, P. T., MacMillan-Lawler, M., Rupp, J., & Baker, E. K. (2014). Geomorphology of the oceans. Marine Geology, 352, 4–24.
Heezen, B. C., & Hollister, C. D. (1971). The face of the deep (p. 659). Oxford University Press.
Hovland, M. (2008). Deep-water coral reefs: Unique biodiversity hotspots (p. 278). Chichester, UK: Praxis Publishing (Springer).
Koslow, J. A., Auster, P., Bergstad, O. A., Roberts, J. M., Rogers, A., Vecchione, M., Harris, P. T., Rice, J., & Bernal, P. (2015). Biological communities on seamounts and other submarine features potentially threatened by disturbance. In: L. Inniss, A. Simcock, & others (Eds.), United Nations World Ocean Assessment. http://www.un.org/Depts/los/global_reporting/WOA_RegProcess.htm
Marsh, L., Huvenne, V. A. I., & Jones, D. O. B. (2018). Geomorphological evidence of large vertebrates interacting with the seafloor at abyssal depths in a region designated for deep-sea mining. Royal Society Open Science, 5(8), 180286.
Normark, W. R., & Carlson, P. R. (2003). Giant submarine canyons: Is size any clue to their importance in the rock record? Geological Society of America Special Paper, 370, 175–190.
Piper, D. J. W., Cochonate, P., & Morrison, M. L. (1999). The sequence of events around the epicentre of the 1929 grand banks earthquake: Initiation of debris flows and turbidity current inferred from side scan sonar. Sedimentology, 46, 79–97.
Puig, P., Canals, M., Company, J. B., Martı’n, J., Amblas, D., Lastras, G., Palanques, A., & Calafat, A. M. (2012). Ploughing the deep sea floor. Nature, 489, 286–289.
Purser, A., Marcon, Y., Hoving, H. J., Vecchione, M., Piatkowski, U., Eason, D., Bluhm, H., & Boetius, A. (2016). Association of deep-sea incirrate octopods with manganese crusts and nodule fields in the Pacific Ocean. Current Biology, 26(24), R1268–R1269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.10.052.
Salinas-de-León, P., Phillips, B., Ebert, D., Shivji, M., Cerutti-Pereyra, F., Ruck, C., Fisher, C. R., & Marsh, L. (2018). Deep-sea hydrothermal vents as natural egg-case incubators at the Galapagos rift. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 1788. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20046-4.
Smith, C. R., & Baco, A. R. (2003). Ecology of whale falls at the deep sea floor. Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual Review, 41, 311–354.
Sumaila, U. R., Lam, V. W. Y., Miller, D. D., Teh, L., Watson, R. A., Zeller, D., Cheung, W. W. L., Côté, I. M., Rogers, A. D., Roberts, C., Sala, E., & Pauly, D. (2015). Winners and losers in a world where the high seas is closed to fishing. Scientific Reports, 5, 8481.
Van Dover, C. L. (2011). Tighten regulations on deep-sea mining. Nature, 470(7332), 31–33.
Van Dover, C. L., Aronson, J., Pendleton, L., Smith, S., Arnaud-Haond, S., Moreno-Mateos, D., Barbier, E., Billett, D., Bowers, K., Danovaro, R., Edwards, A., Kellert, S., Morato, T., Pollard, E., Rogers, A., & Warner, R. (2014). Ecological restoration in the deep sea: Desiderata. Marine Policy, 44(0), 98–106.
Van Dover, C. L., Ardron, J. A., Escobar, E., Gianni, M., Gjerde, K. M., Jaeckel, A., Jones, D. O. B., Levin, L. A., Niner, H. J., Pendleton, L., Smith, C. R., Thiele, T., Turner, P. J., Watling, L., & Weaver, P. P. E. (2017). Biodiversity loss from deep-sea mining. Nature Geoscience, 10, 464–465.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harris, P.T. (2020). The Face of the Deep. In: Mysterious Ocean. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15632-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15632-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15631-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15632-9
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)