Antarctica’s new deepest point, the ‘Factorian Deep,’ mapped for first time
Researchers have released the most detailed map yet of Antarctica’s frigid Southern Ocean, including the ocean’s new deepest point, the Factorian Deep, which lies almost 24,400 feet (7,437 meters) below the sea’s surface.
Located at a depth approximately equivalent to 17 Empire State Buildings stacked top to bottom, the Factorian Deep was discovered by American explorer and entrepreneur Victor Vescovo in 2019 as part of his Five Depths Expedition to map the deepest points of the five seas. Vescovo personally piloted a submersible called “Limiting Factor” (for which the factorian Deep) to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean’s South Sandwich Trench – an underwater canyon stretching some 600 miles (965 kilometers) of seafloor between South America and the Atlantic Ocean Antarctic.
The Trench crosses the 60th parallel south, an invisible line of latitude 60 degrees south of the equator that separates the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. Vescovo’s expedition mapped the entire length of the South Sandwich Trench for the first time ever, exposing the new lowest point of the Southern Ocean just south of the 60th parallel.
And now, for the first time, the Factorian Deep has been documented on a seafloor map. In a new study published June 7 in the journal scientific data (opens in new tab)An international team of researchers has included the Factorian Deep in an expansive new map of the Southern Ocean’s seamounts, canyons and plateaux.
The giant map is a joint effort by the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO), which began mapping the Southern Ocean in 2013, and the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, which aims to cover the entire global seafloor by 2030 map.
The new map relies on more than 1,200 sets of sonar data collected primarily from research vessels from around the world and the rugged ice-breaking ships that blazed a trail for them, the researchers wrote. The seafloor map covers more than 18.5 million square miles (48 million square kilometers) of seafloor, more than doubling the coverage in the first IBCSO map of the region released in 2013.
As comprehensive as this coverage sounds, there is still a lot of work to do to complete the project. If you were to divide the map’s 18.5 million square miles into a grid of squares, each about 5,382 square feet (500 square meters), only 23% of those squares would have at least one modern depth measurement. according to the BBC.
With this in mind, IBCSO encourages all vessels transiting the Southern Ocean to turn on their sonars and contribute data to the project.
Visualizing the quirks and contours of the Southern Ocean is important for a number of reasons, IBCSO officials told the BBC. Aside from being useful for navigation, the maps will benefit biological research by locating the locations of underwater mountains (called seamounts), which are typically underwater biodiversity hotspots. Sea depth also affects the movement of currents and vertical water mixing, which are accounted for in climate models that show how oceans move heat around the planet.
Originally published on Live Science.
https://www.livescience.com/antarctica-southern-ocean-factorian-deep Antarctica’s new deepest point, the ‘Factorian Deep,’ mapped for first time
