Scotia Sea
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Scotia_Sea".

Approximate area of the sea in the Southern Hemisphere

Launching the James Caird from the shore of Elephant Island, 24 April 1916

The Scotia Sea (57°30′S, 040°00′W) is partly in the Southern Ocean and mostly in the Atlantic Ocean between Tierra del Fuego (Mitre Peninsula), Burdwood Bank [1] (Banco Namuncurá), Staten Island, Shag Rocks, Black Rock, South Georgia, Clerke Rocks, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney Islands, and the Antarctic Peninsula, and bordered on the west by Drake Passage. These island groups all sit on top of the Scotia Ridge, which frames the Scotia Sea north, east, and south. The Scotia Sea covers an area of about 900,000 km². Named in about 1932 after the Scotia, the expedition ship used in these waters by the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902-04) under William S. Bruce.

Habitually stormy and cold, the most famous traverse of this frigid sea was made in 1916 by Sir Ernest Shackleton and four others in the adapted lifeboat James Caird when they left Elephant Island and reached South Georgia two weeks later.

About half of the sea falls above the continental shelf.

Geopolitics

In Argentina, the Scotia Sea is considered part of the Argentine Sea (Spanish Mar Argentino), and many of the territories claimed by Argentina such as South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, lie within this region.

2006 earthquake

On 20 August 2006 an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 struck at 1:41 a.m. local time (0341 GMT). The exact location was 61.011°S, 34.375°W at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles) with a USGS event ID of "usrqal".^[1]

References

1. ^ event "usrqal", according to the USGS

Further reading

• Google Maps

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