Exam 18: The Sea Floor

These machines can take geologists to many parts of the sea floor to observe, photograph, and sample rock and sediment.

Guyots and seamounts are scattered randomly on the sea floor.

A contour current is a bottom current that flows parallel to the slopes of the continental margin.

The continental rise is a wedge of sediment that extends from the lower part of the continent slope to the deep-sea floor.

_____ currents are bottom currents that flows parallel to the slopes of the continental margin.

In a passive continental margin, there is a lack of _______.

A(n) _____ is a great mass of sediment-laden water that is pulled downward by gravity along the continental slope.

Terrigineous sediment is sediment derived from the land.

The deepest places on Earth, more than 11 km below sea level, are the abyssal plains.

______ proposed that the three types of coral reefs are related to each other by subsidence of a central volcanic island.

The ____ is a shallow submarine platform at the edge of a continent.

Submarine canyons are erosional features.

A ______ is a bottom flowing current that flows parallel to the slopes of the continental margins.

A basic tool for indirectly studying the sea floor is the ____, which measures water depth.

This instrument works on essentially the same principles as echo sounder but can penetrate the bottom of the sea floor and provides more information.

Atolls are circles of reefs that rim lagoons.

Oceanic trenches are marked by _______.

Oceans cover more than 71% of the Earth's surface.

Project FAMOUS used submersibles to study ______.

The Grand Banks cable breaks of 1929 are interpreted to be the result of earthquake-caused ____.