Antarctica is commonly known as the land of penguins, cold temperatures, and is home to about 90 percent of the world’s ice. But did you know that under all of that ice hides miles and miles of underwater canyons?
Thousands of these geological spectacles — known as submarine canyons — exist worldwide, yet scientists have struggled to map and study them, particularly in remote polar regions. Now, the most complete map of the Antarctic submarine canyons has been published in Marine Geology, detailing 332 canyon networks that reach a maximum depth of over 13,000 feet.
“Some of the submarine canyons we analyzed reach depths of over 4,000 meters (13,123 feet). The most spectacular of these are in East Antarctica, which is characterized by complex, branching canyon systems,” said David Amblàs, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences at the University of Barcelona, in a press release. “The systems often begin with ...
