Deep Water Waves Sea Floor

The purple sea floor at the center of the view is the puerto rico trench.

Deep water waves sea floor.

Shallow water waves figure 7 4b waves which interact with the sea floor are known as shallow water waves. Hadopelagic zone deep ocean trenches greater than 6 000m in some places there are trenches that are deeper than the surrounding ocean floor. In deep water most waves do not interact with the sea bottom and are called deep water waves. Roughly 97 of the planet s water is in its oceans and the oceans are the source of the vast majority of water vapor that condenses in the atmosphere and falls as rain or snow on the continents.

The deep sea is a relatively mysterious and unknown part of the earth as only about 1 of the ocean floor has been explored by humans. It might be traveling 500 miles per hour 800 kilometers per hour but it has a very long wavelength and very little amplitude. Perspective view of the sea floor of the atlantic ocean and the caribbean sea. When the energy of the waves touches the ocean floor the water particles drag along the bottom and flatten their orbit fig.

Deep sea exploration has revealed varied landscapes which include volcanoes seamounts hydrothermal vents and cold seeps. In fact there have been more missions into space than journeys down to the greatest depths of the oceans. In deep water the wave reaches its natural frequency without the interruption of a sea floor or lake bottom. This is also known as the abyssal zone.

When deep water waves move into shallow water they change into breaking waves. Even a tsunami wave can be nearly undetectable on the open ocean. Abyssopelagic zone 4 000 6 000m this is the zone past the continental slope the deep water just over the ocean bottom.