We've traversed abyssal hills, rise crests, and now fracture zones. They were first discovered by Bill Menard (of Scripps) in the 50's off the coast of Mendocino, California. It created quite a stir in the scientific world at the time, given that nothing analogous had been discovered on land, and these features were quite frequent along the ocean floor. It is a distinctive feature in undeformed crust, and they appear in parallel bands. In the image below, it is the deep (coded blue) area in the lower right part of the swath.
In the image above, of a side scan, it shows reflectivity of the sonar. Therefore, more dense regions such as rocks appear darker as they reflect more sound. Less dense regions of the ocean floor such as sediment appear lighter, as they reflect less
Speaking of color-coded bands, I fear that if I ever go in a submersible to the ocean floor, I will expect a world of rainbow color. But I have to remind myself that these colors are just our way of coding the information. And as pretty as they are, seeing the sea floor in person would be wondrous in its own right.
In other news, our knowledge of the ship and nautical world continues to grow. We had a tour to the engine room a couple of days ago, looked out of underwater portholes at the great blue, and will continue our explorations with a nautical astronomy class this evening. We have a few photos floating around--will try to them posted sooner than later...
Fair Winds,
~Jasmeet
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