Explorers reveal secrets of underwater ‘Grand Canyon’
A five-week expedition to map and sample a giant underwater canyon off the northwest coast of Morocco has completed its mission, yielding the best look yet at the deep-sea wonder.
More than half a mile (about 1 kilometer) deep, 280 miles (450 km) long and up to 20 miles (30 km) wide, Agadir Canyon is approximately the size of the Grand Canyon. A joint team of British and German scientists aboard the German research vessel Maria S Merian took images and samples of the seafloor to create a high-resolution 3D map of the canyon and sample its marine life.
Up until now, Agadir Canyon, considered by some measures the world’s largest undersea canyon, has rarely been explored, said British expedition leader Russell Wynn of the National Oceanography Centre in England. “There are a lot of interesting features that no one has ever gone and looked at,” Wynn continued.
Long flows of sediment carved out the canyon over millions of years, much like a river carves out a canyon, including the Grand Canyon, on land. Researchers had mapped Agadir Canyon previously at a very crude scale that revealed features a few hundred meters big. Now, using a technology called multibeam sonar, Wynn and his colleagues have mapped the region on the scale of a few meters to tens of meters.
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Source: www.livescience.com
Image credit: Sebastian Krastel
