The Tongue of the Ocean (TOTO) is the name of a deep oceanic trench in the Bahamas separating the islands of Andros and New Providence.
The TOTO is a U-shaped, relatively flat-bottomed trench approximately 20 miles (32 km) wide by 150 miles (240 km) long with a depth which varies gradually from 3,600 feet (1,100 m) in the south to 6,600 feet (2,000 m) in the north. Its only exposure to the open ocean is at the northern end, and except for this ocean opening, the TOTO is surrounded by numerous islands, reefs, and shoals which make a peripheral shelter isolating it from ocean disturbances, particularly high ambient noise.
This channel and the Providence Channel are the two main branches of the Great Bahama Canyon, a submerged geological feature formed by erosion during periods of lower sea level. During their early history the Tongue of the Ocean and the Providence Channels were broad, relatively shallow basins flanked by growing carbonate banks. As the Blake-Bahama platform subsided, sedimentation kept pace with subsidence on the banks, but not in the basins.
Famous quotes containing the words tongue of the, tongue and/or ocean:
“Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 12:18.
“Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair,
No stone is there to show, no tongue to say,
What was; no dirge, except the hollow sea’s,
Mourns o’er the beauty of the Cyclades.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)