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South Shetland Islands
- Drake Passage, deep waterway, 600 miles (1,000 km) wide, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Cape Horn (the southernmost point of South America) and the South Shetland Islands, situated about 100 miles (160 km) north of the Antarctic Peninsula.
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Drake Passage. Drake Passage, deep waterway, 600 miles (1,000 km) wide, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Cape Horn (the southernmost point of South America) and the South Shetland Islands, situated about 100 miles (160 km) north of the Antarctic Peninsula.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Feb 23, 2024 · The Drake Passage is the body of water between South America’s Cape Horn, Chile, Argentina, and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean (Scotia Sea) with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean.
Nov 29, 2023 · South America’s southernmost islands, called Tierra del Fuego, are less than 1,120 kilometers (700 miles) from Antarctica. These islands even host some Antarctic birds, such as penguins, albatrosses, and terns.
A little geography. The Falkland Islands, at 52° South and 60° West, just 350 km from the coast of Tierra del Fuego, are made up of 200 islets surrounding two large lands -the East and West Falklands- separated by a navigable channel. The total surface area of the islands is approximately 12,000 km² .
- Overview
- Physiography
- Hydrology and biological resources
The Southern Ocean has an average depth of 10,728 feet (3,270 meters) and a maximum depth of 24,383 feet (7,432 meters) in the South Sandwich Trench, southeast of the island of South Georgia.
How many square miles does the Southern Ocean cover?
The Southern Ocean covers 8,479,000 square miles (21,960,000 square km), which is approximately one-sixteenth of Earth’s total ocean area. It holds 17,226,000 cubic miles (71,800,000 cubic km) of water.
What organisms live in the Southern Ocean?
The waters of the Southern Ocean favor the growth of diatoms and other single-celled plants. Krill are the most important organism in the higher food chain. Animals on the sea bottom include hydrozoans, corals, sponges, bryozoans, sea spiders, isopods, polychaetes, eelpouts, sea snails, rat-tailed fishes, codlike fishes, hagfish, and skates.
Southern Ocean, body of salt water covering approximately one-sixteenth of Earth’s total ocean area. The Southern Ocean is made up of the portions of the world ocean south of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans and their tributary seas surrounding Antarctica below 60° S. It is unbroken by any other continental landmass. Its narrowest constriction is the Drake Passage, 600 miles (about 1,000 km) wide, between South America and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. In terms of area, only the Arctic Ocean is smaller.
The Southern Ocean covers 8,479,000 square miles (21,960,000 square km), and it holds 17,226,000 cubic miles (71,800,000 cubic km) of water. It has an average depth of 10,728 feet (3,270 metres) and a maximum depth of 24,383 feet (7,432 metres) in the South Sandwich Trench, southeast of the island of South Georgia.
Britannica Quiz
Everything Earth
The structure of the ocean floor includes a continental shelf usually less than 160 miles (about 260 km) wide that attains its maximum width of more than 1,600 miles (2,600 km) in the vicinity of the Weddell and Ross seas. There are oceanic basins farther north that are as much as 14,800 feet (4,500 metres) deep, defined by oceanic rises and often marked by ranges of abyssal hills. There are also narrow oceanic trenches with high relief, such as the South Sandwich Trench on the eastern side of the South Sandwich Islands. Other relief features include oceanic plateaus that rise from the oceanic basins to depths of less than 6,650 feet (2,000 metres) below sea level and form rather flat regions, which are often covered by relatively thick sedimentary deposits.
The flow of currents in the Southern Ocean is complex. Water cooled by cold air, outgoing radiation, and katabatic winds off of the Antarctic continent sinks and flows northward along the ocean bottom and is replaced at the surface by an equal volume of warmer water flowing south from the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. The meeting point of t...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The South American–Antarctic Ridge or simply American-Antarctic Ridge (SAAR or AAR) (in Spanish: Dorsal Antártico-Americana) is the tectonic spreading center between the South American Plate and the Antarctic Plate.
Gondwana (originally Gondwanaland) is an hypothesized ancient southern supercontinent comprising most of the landmasses in today's southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia - New Guinea and New Zealand, as well as Arabia and the Indian subcontinent, which are in the Northern Hemisphere.
