Sea-Floor Sunday #27: Sand waves in the Chukchi Borderland

This week’s Sea-Floor Sunday post is very quick … I’ve been busy all weekend with this.

This week’s image highlights some huge bedforms on the sea floor in an area called the Chukchi Borderlands, which is north of the Bering Straight in the Arctic Ocean.

image from http://ccom.unh.edu

Here’s the blurb directly from the CCOM-JHC website:

Map view of a 300 km2 area of the surface of Chukchi Cap. The bedforms are asymmetrical, have wave heights of 10 to 15 m and wavelengths of 2 to 2.5 km. The orientation of the bedforms suggest a strong current flowing from NE to SW across the cap. The scours are 2- to 6-m deep and curved. The scours appear to terminate at ~430 m present water depth. Water depth range in image 400m to 1400m.

This site discusses the various currents in this topographically-complex area that are responsible for ocean water exchange between the Pacific and Arctic oceans.

I’ve post about both sea-floor bedforms (sometimes called sand waves) and scour features before here and here, respectively.

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