Seabed - Seabed Features

Seabed Features

Each area of the seabed has typical features such as common soil composition, typical topography, salinity of water layers above it, marine life, magnetic direction of rocks,and sedimenting.

Seabed topography is flat where sedimenting is heavy and covers the tectonic features. Sedimenting comes from various sources:

• Land erosion sediments, brought mainly by rivers,
• New "young rock" – New magma of basalt composition, from the mid-ocean ridge.
• Underwater volcanic ash spreading, especially from hydrothermal vents.
• Microorganism activity.
• Sea currents eroding the seabed itself,
• Marine life: corals, fish, algae, crabs, marine plants and other biological created sediment.

Where sedimenting is avoided, such as in the Atlantic ocean especially in the northern and eastern Atlantic, the original tectonic activity can be clearly seen as straight line "cracks" or "vents" thousands of kilometers long.

Recently there has been the discovery of abundant marine life in the deep sea, especially around hydrothermal vents. Large deep sea communities of marine life have been discovered around black and white smokers – hydrothermal vents emitting typical chemicals toxic to humans and most of the vertebrates. This marine life receives its energy from both the extreme temperature difference (typically a drop of 150 degrees) and from chemosynthesis by bacteria.

Brine pools are another seabed feature, usually connected to cold seeps.