Outline:

1. Topic title slide

2. Objectives
3. Recap about sea-floor spreading
3. Definition of Ocean Basin
4. Examples of ocean basins and its description
- show the oceans of the earth
5. Methods of Measuring Ocean Depths
6. Features of the Ocean
- with sample pictures (detailed name and locations)
7. Identification of the features of the ocean basin
8. Quiz 5-items

1. Topic title slide

Ocean Basin

2. Objectives
1. Define Ocean basin
2. Cite examples of ocean basin and describe each
3. Identify the various methods of measuring ocean depths
4. Describe the different features of ocean basin.

3. Recap about sea-floor spreading

Sea-floor spreading occurs at a (1) divergent plate

boundary. When tectonic plates separate, (2)
molten/basaltic magma rises up and cools down into rock
forming (3) New Crust. New crust is formed at the (4)
mid-ocean ridge, elsewhere on earth, the (5) ______is
being destroyed at the same rate it is created. This (6)
______will go on the region which is the (7)
_________zone and plunged into a high (8) ______ and
pressure environment. Materials melt and the migrate (9)
______ giving rise to (10) __________.

3. Definition of Ocean Basin

- A basin is a depression, or dip, in the Earth’s surface. Basins are shaped like bowls, with sides higher than
the bottom.
- Ocean basins are the largest depressions on Earth. Edges of the continents, called continental shelves, form
the sides of ocean basins.
- Ocean basins are regions that are below sea level. About 70% of these areas hold the planet’s water
(About 70% of the planet's surface is made up of ocean basins, which are the regions that are below sea
level. These areas hold the majority of the planet's water.)
- Seafloor spreading and subduction are the most important types of tectonic activity that shape ocean
basins.
- Ocean basins can be identified as active or inactive. If active, there are a lot of new structures being created
and shaped, or they can be inactive, where their surface is slow to change and does little more than collect
sediment.
4. Examples of ocean basins and its description
There are different examples of ocean basins.

Different ocean basins

There are 5 major basins coordinating with the major oceans of the world.
1.

Pacific Ocean basin

- which is considered as the largest and has the
greatest depth.
- The Pacific Ocean Basin earns the title as the
biggest and the deepest ocean basin in the world. The
basin is located on the east of the North and South
American continents, west of Asia, Malaysia and
Australia.
- It covers a large part of the Earth with water,
approximately around 155 million square kilometres.

2. Atlantic Ocean basin

- The Atlantic Ocean Basin is the second biggest ocean basin on
Earth, right after the Pacific Ocean Basin. It is named after a famous
member of the Titans in Greek mythology, Atlas.
- The Atlantic Ocean which is about half the size of the Pacific not quite as
deep.
- It covers around 20% of surface on Earth which is around 75 million
square kilometres.

3. Indian Ocean Basin - Another is the Indian Ocean which is slightly

smaller than the Atlantic largely a Southern Hemisphere (water
Hemisphere)
- The Indian Ocean Basin is said to list as the third largest basins in
the world. It is roughly located in the West part of Africa.
- This basin is around 68 million square kilometres in total with a
depth of 4.210 meters.

4. Southern Ocean Basin

 - The Southern Ocean Basin is the fourth largest ocean basin in the world. This basin includes the
areas that surround the Antartica,
the southern parts of the Indian,
Pacific and Atlantic Ocean basins.
- It is around 20 million square
kilometres.

5. Arctic Ocean Basin

- and lastly, the Arctic Ocean about
7% of the size of the Pacific.
- Although the Arctic Ocean Basin
is said to be the smallest basin
among all the others, it covers the
majority of the Arctic. It ranges
from the North Pole to the shores in North America, Asia and Europe.
- The basin has a surface area of 14 million square kilometres with a depth of 1.500 meters.

5. Methods of Measuring Ocean Depths

Bathymetry- measurements of ocean depths and the charting of the shape or topography of the ocean
floor.

Various Methods of Measuring Ocean Depths

a. Sounding line
- weighted rope lowered overboard until it touched the ocean
bottom; this old method is time-consuming and inaccurate.

- A sounding line (a rope that has a weight attached) is lowered over

the side of the ship. When the weight hits the seafloor, the line goes
slack, and is marked at the water’s surface. The weight is pulled
back up and the distance from the surface mark to the weight is
measured. This length equals the depth of the ocean at that point.
This method of seafloor mapping is very time consuming, especially
when charting deep water.

b. Echo sounding
- uses SONAR that measures depth by emitting a burst of high-frequency sound
and listening for the echo from the seafloor.
- Sound is emitted from the source on the ship and the returning echo is detected
by a receiver on the ship. Deeper water means a longer time for the echo to return
to the receiver.
- A Brief Look at How Sea Bed Depth can be Measured with Sonar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIVaxNkkvxo

c. Satellite Altimetry
- profiles the shape of the sea surface by measuring the travel time of a radar pulse from the satellite to the
ocean surface and back to the satellite receiver. The shape of the sea surface approximates the shape of the
seafloor.
- Large-scale mapping of the ocean floor is
also carried out which use radio waves to
measure the height of the sea surface (radar
altimetry).
The sea surface is not flat; gravity causes it to be slightly higher over elevated features on the ocean floor,
and slightly lower over trenches and other depressions.
- Satellites send out radio waves, and similar to an echosounder, can use the returning waves to detect
differences in sea surface height down to 3-6 cm. These differences in sea surface heights allow us to
determine the topography under the surface. https://rwu.pressbooks.pub/webboceanography/chapter/1-4-
mapping-the-seafloor/

6. Features of the Ocean

1. Continental Margin
- refer to the region of transition from the land to the deep seafloor; i.e., between continental and
oceanic crust.
- the submerged outer edge of the continent where continental crust transitions into oceanic crust.

There are two types of continental margin:

a. Passive or Atlantic type
- occur where the transition between oceanic and continental crust which is not an active plate
boundary.
- Features a wide, gently sloping continental shelf (50-200m depth), a steeper continental slope
(3000-4000m depth), and a flatter continental rise.
- It develops when continents are drifted apart and form a new ocean.
- They are also known as aseismic or passive margins because they have relatively little earthquake
activity.

1a. Continental shelf

- a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of
relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea
Simply defined as the part, the shallow extension of the
continent that would be underwater. It's continental crust under
shallow water. It's kind of where you start to make a transition
from being in land to being into the ocean, but not really deep
into the ocean yet. Just kind of a shallow transition.

2a. Continental slope

- seaward border of the continental shelf.
- the slope between the outer edge of the continental shelf and the deep ocean
floor.
the continental slope is a major transition zone from being in the continents to
being in the oceans; this is we're going to go from continental crust to oceanic
crust.

3a. Continental rise

- a major depositional regime in oceans made up of thick sequences of continental material that accumulate
between the continental slope and the abyssal plain.
continental rise is really where the ocean truly begins, this is where you're going to find all your basaltic
rocks or all your oceanic rocks; this is also where sediment from the land (due to gravity) is going to wash
off (also called mass wasting) the slope and go down into the ocean.

b. Active or Pacific type

- Also known as seismic or active margins because
they are seismically very active.
- An active continental margin is a coastal region
that is characterized by mountain-building activity
 including earthquakes, volcanic activity, and tectonic motion resulting from movement of tectonic
plates.
Active margins typically have a narrower and steeper continental shelf and slope that descends into a
trench or trough.
Figure: The ring of fire is the area along the active
continental margins of the pacific plate.

2. Abyssal plains and Abyssal hills

- abyssal plain is extremely flat sediment covered stretches of the ocean floor, interrupted by
occasional volcanoes, mostly extinct, called seamounts (undersea mountains formed by volcanic
activity)
- abyssal hill is a small hill that rises from the floor of an abyssal plain. Typically 50-300m high and
common on the slopes of the mid-oceanic ridge.

Abyssal Plains are the

flattest parts of the ocean.
They're essentially
featureless, they're not the
deepest parts of the ocean,
but they really have
nothing going on; it's hard
for life to really exist
down there in great
abundance because it's so deep within the ocean sunlight doesn't get down there very well but there is still
life down there, but the main point here is that these are really the flattest parts of the ocean.

3. Mid oceanic ridges

- The massive mid-ocean ridge system is a
continuous range of underwater volcanoes
that wraps around the globe like seams on a
baseball, stretching nearly 65,000
kilometers (40,390 miles). The majority of
the system is underwater, with an average
water depth to the top of the ridge of 2,500
meters (8,200 feet).
- It has a central rift valley and rugged
topography on its flanks.
The mid-ocean ridge is the most extensive
chain of mountains on Earth also called Figure: shown in this map in red, forms along the
submarine mountain chain, stretching nearly divergent plate boundaries of the ridge system. This system
65,000 kilometers (40,390 miles) and with forms the longest and largest mountain range on Earth,
more than 90 percent of the mountain range winding its way between the continents.
lying underwater, in the deep ocean.

4. Deep-ocean trenches
- narrow, elongated depressions on the sea-floor many of which are adjacent to arcs of the island
with active volcanoes
- deepest features of the seafloor.
they formed from convergence; they formed from a convergent boundary. They typically form in
locations where one tectonic plate subducts under another.

Mariana Trench, also called Marianas Trench, deep-sea trench in the floor of the western North
Pacific Ocean, the deepest such trench known on Earth, located mostly east as well as south of the
Mariana Islands.
 5. Seamounts and volcanic islands
- Submerged volcanoes are called seamounts while;
Seamounts are kind of a rounded or jagged eroded
mountain underneath the water.

- Those that rise above the ocean surface are called

volcanic islands.
Oceanic islands also known as volcanic islands, are
formed by eruptions of volcanoes on the ocean floor
whose tops have emerged above sea level.
- Surtsey, a volcanic island approximately 32
km from the south coast of Iceland
- These features may be isolated or found in clusters
or chains.

7. Identification of the features of the ocean basin

1. Continental shelf
2. Continental slope
3. Abyssal plain
4. Volcanic arc
5. Volcanic Island
6. Coral reef
7. Trench
8. Continental rise
9. Coastline
10. Continental rise

8. Quiz 5-items

1. Flat sediment that result in the spreading of the sea floor (plate tectonics) and the melting of the lower
oceanic crust.
a. seamounts c. abyssal plain
b. ocean basin d. continental slope

2. It is a type of SONAR which measures depth by emitting a burst of high frequency sound and listening
for the echo from the sound floor.
a. Echo sounding c. Satellite Altimetry
 b. Sounding line d. none of the above

3. Which of the methods below is used to lower the weighted rope overboard until it touches the ocean
bottom and this is also considered as time-consuming and inaccurate?
a. Echo sounding c. Satellite Altimetry
b. Sounding line d. none of the above

4. In what way can oceans provide food for humans?

a. provides for marine plants and animals
b. release energy for land plants and animals
c. provide water for the land animals and plants
d. serves as habitat for marine plants and animals

5. It is the submerged volcanoes.

a. Seamounts c. Volcanic islands
b. Abyssal plain d. Continental rise