What Covers The Ocean Floor

Bathymetry the shape of the ocean floor is largely a result of a process called plate tectonics the outer rocky layer of the earth includes about a dozen large sections called tectonic plates that are arranged like a spherical jig saw puzzle floating on top of the earth s hot flowing mantle.

What covers the ocean floor. The planet has one global ocean though oceanographers and the nations of the world have divided it into distinct geographic regions. The ocean basins are characterized not only by lying in deep water the ocean floor averages about 4km below sea level but also by being underlain by a thin layer of crust. Project azorian erroneously called jennifer by the press after its top secret security compartment was a u s. Benthos is the community of organisms which live on in or near the seabed the area known as the benthic zone.

On average oceanic crust is only 6 to 7km thick compared to 35 to 40km for con tinental crust. The pacific atlantic indian and arctic oceans. This community lives in or near marine sedimentary environments from tidal pools along the foreshore out to the continental shelf and then down to the abyssal depths the benthic zone is the ecological region on in and immediately above the seabed including the sediment surface. What type of sediment covers the least amount of the ocean floor.

Near continental margins areas of upwelling. Their total volume on the seafloor is. The largest terrigenous deposits are found near continental margins. Calcareous and siliceous oozes are.

Terrigenous sediments are the most abundant. Central intelligence agency cia project to recover the sunken soviet submarine k 129 from the pacific ocean floor in 1974 using the purpose built ship hughes glomar explorer. The sediment type which covers the least volume on the ocean floor is cosmogenous. The biosphere reaches from the floor of the ocean to the tops of the highest mountains.

All together the biosphere is a layer blanketing the earth about 20km 12 4m thick. The rocks of earth s crust are made up of. While there is only one global ocean the vast body of water that covers 71 percent of the earth is geographically divided into distinct named regions. The 1968 sinking of k 129 occurred approximately 1 600 miles 2 600 km northwest of hawaii.

In recent years some oceanographers have determined that the seas around antarctica deserve their own designation. The ocean is a huge body of saltwater that covers about 71 percent of the earth s surface. Biogenous sediments are most abundant.