Mar Del Plata Canyon

Mar Del Plata Canyon Latest News

A groundbreaking expedition to Argentina’s Mar del Plata Canyon uncovered over 40 potential new deep-sea species, including glass squids and pink lobsters.

About Mar Del Plata Canyon

• It is located at the continental margin off the coast of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina.
• It lies about 250-300 km offshore from the city of Mar del Plata.
• It is one of Argentina’s largest submarine canyons.
• The area is characterised by fine sand with a mixture of terrigenous material and planktonic foraminifera substrate.
• It is highly productive and influenced by the permanent Argentine Shelf-break Front.
  • This front marks the boundary where subantarctic shelf waters meet the cooler, more saline waters of the Falkland-Malvinas Current, creating a significant thermohaline front.

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What are Submarine Canyons?

• A submarine canyon is any of a class of narrow, steep-sided valleys that cut into continental slopes and continental rises of the oceans. 
• Submarine canyons originate either within continental slopes or on a continental shelf. 
• They are rare on continental margins that have extremely steep continental slopes or escarpments. 
• Most submarine canyons extend only about 48 km (30 miles) or less in length, but a few are more than 320 km (200 miles) long.
• They usually are many kilometres in width; for instance, the Grand Bahama Canyon measures 37 km (23 miles) at its widest point.
• Submarine canyons are so called because they resemble canyons made by rivers on land.
• A relatively large number of submarine canyons are located directly offshore of river canyons of adjacent land areas and may have once been connected to extensions of the latter. 
• In most cases, however, the characteristics of the submarine variety and those of the nearby land canyons are quite distinct. 
  • The submarine canyons, for example, tend to have steeper side slopes, much higher gradients, and considerably narrower floors. 
• Like rivers on land, these underwater features act as the primary conduits for sediments (and associated nutrients and organic carbon) transported from the continental shelf to the deep ocean basins.
  • Here the sediment is deposited, forming enormous sediment accumulations, called submarine fans, that resemble river deltas.

Source: TOI