Sea-floor and sea-ice conditions in the western Weddell Sea, Antarctica, around the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance ...
AbstractMarine-geophysical evidence on sea-floor morphology and shallow acoustic stratigraphy are used to examine the substrate around the location at which Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance sank in 1915 and on the continental slope-shelf sedimentary system above this site in the western W...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.52734 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/305656 |
| Summary: | AbstractMarine-geophysical evidence on sea-floor morphology and shallow acoustic stratigraphy are used to examine the substrate around the location at which Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance sank in 1915 and on the continental slope-shelf sedimentary system above this site in the western Weddell Sea. Few signs of turbidity-current and mass-wasting activity are found near or upslope of the wreck site, and any such activity was probably linked to full-glacial higher-energy conditions when ice last advanced across the continental shelf. The wreck is well below the maximum depth of iceberg keels and will not have been damaged by ice-keel ploughing. The wreck has probably been draped by only a few centimetres of fine-grained sediment since it sank in 1915. Severe modern sea-ice conditions hamper access to the wreck site. Accessing and investigating the wreck of Endurance in the Weddell Sea therefore represents a significant challenge. An ice-breaking research vessel is required, and even this would not ... |
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