Seamounts: Gigantic Elevations More Than 1,000 Meters High At The Bottom Of Ocean

MessageToEagle.com – Seamounts are either active or dormant volcanoes that rise dramatically from the bottom of the ocean and never reach the surface.

They are large isolated elevation(s), greater than 1,000 m in relief above the sea floor, characteristically of conical form.

A map of a seamount in the Arctic Ocean created by NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey by gathering data with a multibeam echo sounder. Existing charts of the Arctic bottom showed only a small knoll where scientists discovered the complex seamount. The seamount abruptly rises more than 3,000 meters (about 9,850 feet) from the ocean floor to approximately 925 meters (3,035 feet) of depth. The cruise team also discovered water depths more than 4,000 meters (13,125 feet), depths not previously measured anywhere in the Amerasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. Credits: NOAA

These gigantic undersea mountains were once formed by volcanic activity. They have long been considered hazards to submarine navigation.

According to new estimates, taken together, seamounts cover approximately 28.8 million square kilometers of the Earth’s surface! That’s larger than deserts, tundra, or any other single land-based global habitat on the planet.

Seamounts are abundant and some of them still remain unmapped, posing a navigational danger.

Muirfield Seamount is named after the ship that hit it in 1973 and more recently, the submarine USS San Francisco ran into an uncharted seamount in 2005 at a speed of 35 knots (40.3 mph; 64.8 km/h). The accident caused serious damage of the ship and one seaman was killed.

The seamounts are vast, biological hotspots – huge and biologically rich habitats for marine life. The habitats have evolved slowly over millions of years.

Some of the organisms have found a suitable home on these undersea mountain formations due to their shape, comfortable enough to serve as home.

Thanks to the steep slopes of seamounts, nutrients are carried upwards from the depths of the oceans toward the sunlit surface, providing food for creatures ranging from corals to fish to crustaceans.

Thousands of seamounts—most of them undersea volcanoes—tower above the muddy seafloor.

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