Part Ii Bathymetry of the Tongue of the Ocean, Bahamas',2 William D
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE OF THE GULF AND CARIBBEAN VOLUME 13 1963 NUMBER 3 BA.THYMETRY OF THE STRAITS OF FLORIDA AND THE BAHAMA ISLANDS PART II BATHYMETRY OF THE TONGUE OF THE OCEAN, BAHAMAS',2 WILLIAM D. ATHEARN Woods Hole Oceanographic institution ABSTRACT A bathymetric chart, in two sections, of the Tongue of the Ocean is presented, based on soundings collected in late 1960. The area, roughly L-shaped, extends for over 110 miles into the Great Bahama Bank, between Andros Island to the west and New Providence Island to the east. Slopes appear to be nearly vertical in the upper 100 fathoms, but below this depth they average about 10 to 12 degrees. GuIlies run down the slopes at a spacing of about one per mile in the northerly section; perhaps less frequently in the southerly area. The Tongue of the Ocean has a V-shaped cross-section in its northerly part, but for most of its length it has a comparatively flat floor. Off central Andros Island the floor is incised by a small channel, but in the southerly section the floor is quite smooth, with a very slight gradient upward toward the southeast. Bottom depths range from about 1400 fathoms between northern Andros Island and New Providence Island to about 700 fathoms at the southeasterly limit. Both grabenlike down faulting and regional subsidence of a former topography on which a trellis-type drainage pattern had been developed have been proposed to account for the origin of the Tongue of the Ocean and the other deep channels of the northwestern Bahamas. Present evidence appears to favor the latter hypothesis but much more stratigraphic and seismic infonnation is needed to settle the problem. INTRODUCTION Cutting deeply into the extensive complex of islands and shallow banks comprising the Bahama region are several unusually deep, elongate extensions from the Atlantic Ocean basin (Fig. 1). In the northwesterly half of the region these include Northeast Providence Channel, Northwest Providence Channel, Tongue of the Ocean, and Exuma Sound. These all have bottom depths of a similar magnitude, and the latter three have IContribution No. 1399 from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 2Field survey and chart preparation was performed under U.S. Navy Contract No. N140 (122)-708678; preparation for publication was under U.S. Navy Contract No. Nonr- 2196(00). 366 Bulletin of Marine Science of the Gulf and Caribbean [13(3) o o <0 ll) C\J C\J ....; ll:;;r' ~ :".,- . o . 3 :....: . ll) r-... / ,.. /:' ~ =-~ -••••• ~••••• ~ ...~ .. ~.-; .. : ".' I:' c:::a ~ ~,w···.. / .:, .:>.<:) I. '", =- I,: •••• :w '. \J\' >:,:. ~%~""..... o !"' . ...J ".,: 0 . ••••• <0 ~ o~~.,~.... C; ../ 1--:;; r-.. ....; ,,0 . \> .',' «::; .'V .' ." .",' w~ .' :" .' \J~" ./:F a:: x / ~1- ,;.;>.. .<?w ...:::...•.....:..;. ... ' .... ' ......... ............................ • ~.O C Q 0 :..:':: ~ IClI: \ ~, =-.I \ ..•.. <"! ..'~ ~, 0 • C\J OJ o 0 0 0 ~ ~ ~ ~ FIGURE 1. Index Map of the Northern Bahama Region. 19631 A thearn: Bathymetry 367 a parallel orientation; in fact, Northwest Providence Channel and Exuma Sound are in line. Northeast Providence Channel trends at right angles to the others, and connects the deeper ends of Northwest Providence Channel and the Tongue of the Ocean with the Atlantic Basin. Thus there appears to be a close geological affinity between these major features of the region. Previously published charts and reports concerning the Tongue of the Ocean have served to define its major characteristics, but neither adequate navigational control nor sufficient sounding data have been available to portray the detailed topography of the slopes and bottom. With his discussion of the physiography of the Bahama region Hess (1933) included a chart contoured with an interval of 250 fathoms, his sources being limited soundings obtained during the Navy-Princeton Gravity Expedition to the West Indies in 1932 together with earlier published information. The U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office charts 26-A and 26-B, apparently the most detailed published charts for the area, do not appear to be based on sufficient soundings to warrant contour intervals any closer than ] 00 fathoms. Three recent reports concerning the Tongue of the Ocean (Koczy, et ai., 1958; Reitzel, 1959; Davis, et aI., 1959) included detailed surveys of limited areas made with modern, high-resolution echo sounders. These further indicated that there was a high degree of irregularity to the contours of the slopes which could only be revealed by a much more intensive survey, with better navigational control than had been possible in the past. FIELD WORK AND CHART PREPARATION In December, 1960, the Research Vessel BEAR of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution made a detailed bathymetric survey of that part of the Tongue of the Ocean deeper than ] 00 fathoms, during which approximately 2,200 nautical miles of ship's track were run. A sounding system composed of an Edo echo sounder, a towed Edo transducer and an Alden Precision Graphic Recorder (POR) was used to obtain continuous soundings throughout the survey. A sound velocity meter was lowered at several stations throughout the area to determine corrections to be applied to depths as read from the POR records to obtain true depths. Lambda, a Decca marine survey system with a positioning accuracy of between 25 and 100 feet, depending on atmospheric conditions and distance from shore stations, was used for navigational control. One shore station located on New Providence Island and another on Oreat Exuma Island, ] 25 miles to the southeast, permitted satisfactory coverage for the entire Tongue of the Ocean. Bottom contours, derived wholly from sounding data taken on this survey and corrected for sound velocity variations, were originally drawn 368 Bulletin of Marine Science of the Gulf and Caribbean [13(3) on four separate sheets, three to a scale of 1 : 50,000 for the northerly, elongate section and one to a scale of 1 : 100,000 for the southerly, lobate section which, for lack of sufficient time, was less intensively surveyed. For publication it has been necessary to reduce the scale, at the expense of some of the finer detail on the steeper slopes, and to condense the original four charts to two sheets at a scale of 1 : 145,820. The first, Plate I, includes the elongate, northerly section between New Provi- dence Island and Green Cay, the second, Plate II, includes the southerly, lobate section south and east of Green Cay. Contour interval on the charts is not constant, but rather it varies according to the steepness of the topography to accommodate a maximum of bathymetric information at a single scale. In the deeper, flatter areas an interval of two fathoms was used; at the bottom of the slope the interval was opened to five fathoms. As the average gradient of the slope increased the interval was widened to ten and finally to fifty fathoms for the steep upper slopes. Toward the northern end of the area, where the channel profile becomes V-shaped, even the interval of the deeper contours had to be widened because of increased relief and greater difficulty in interpreting the sounding records. In general, the width of the contour interval reflects not only the physical difficulty of drawing many contours too close together at a given chart scale, but also the degree of accuracy which can be ascribed to the interpretation of the soundings. While this is on the order of ±1 fathom in the flatter areas, where the interval has been made two fathoms, it is probably nearer to ± 15 fathoms on the steep slope where the interval has been opened to fifty fathoms. The lines shown zigzagging across the charts represent the ship's track throughout the survey. Survey lines over the comparatively steep marginal slopes were run approximately normal to the trend of the slope to minimize the incidence of confusing side echoes on the sounding records. Spacing between lines over the slopes averaged a little less than five miles in the upper part of the Tongue of the Ocean but, because of time limitations, was increased to aoproximately ten miles in the southeasterly uart. Two areas on the east slope of Andros Island, in the vicinity of High Cay and between Salvarior Point and Southern BiQht, were surveyed more intensively, revealing the extreme complexity of the slopes. Indications are that this high irregularity is common to the entire margin of the re?ion. Consequent- ly, gaps have of necessity been left in the portrayal of the upper slope contours between sounding lines. Shore points and island outlines indicated on our charts were not directly tied in with the Lambda navigation system as there was no opportunity to take the equipment ashore in the area for this purpose. The approximate positions of lights and a few prominent features were determined by radar ranges and pelorus bearings made from the survey 1963J Athearn: Bathymetry 369 ship while the Lambda system was operating and therefore are indirectly related to the Lambda grid. The accuracy of these positions is limited by the precision with which the ranges and bearings were read, and is believed to be of the order of one-quarter of a mile. Island outlines and the lOa-fathom curve (between the survey lines which occasionally reached shallower depths) have been sketched in with the aid of existing Hydro- graphic Office charts, using the plotted positions of the lights and shore features referred to above as points of reference. TOPOGRAPHICDESCRIPTION The Tongue of the Ocean is a comparatively steep-walled, roughly L-shaped oceanic feature extending deeply into the Great Bahama Bank. Its general depth range from about 1500 fathoms at its outer, northwesterly extremity to about 700 fathoms at its southeasterly, inner limit contrasts strongly with the one- to four-fathom depth range of the extensive surrounding banks.