Seafloor Bathymetry

World War II gave scientists the tools to find the mechanism for continental drift that had eluded Wegener. Maps and other data gathered during the war allowed scientists to develop the seafloor spreading hypothesis. This hypothesis traces oceanic crust from its origin at a mid-ocean ridge to its destruction at a deep sea trench and is the mechanism for continental drift.During World War II, battleships and submarines carried echo sounders to locate enemy submarines. Echo sounders produce sound waves that travel outward in all directions, bounce off the nearest object, and then return to the ship. By knowing the speed of sound in seawater, scientists calculate the distance to the object based on the time it takes for the wave to make a round-trip. During the war, most of the sound waves ricocheted off the ocean bottom. This animation shows how sound waves are used to create pictures of the seafloor and ocean crust.After the war, scientists pieced together the ocean depths to produce bathymetric maps, which reveal the features of the ocean floor as if the water were taken away. Even scientist were amazed that the seafloor was not completely flat. What was discovered was a large chain of mountains along the deep seafloor, called mid-ocean ridges. Scientists also discovered deep sea trenches along the edges of continents or in the sea near chains of active volcanoes. Finally, large, flat areas called abyssal plains we found. When they first observed these bathymetric maps, scientists wondered what had formed these features.

Seafloor Magnetism

Sometimes, for reasons unknown, the magnetic poles switch positions. North becomes south and south becomes north. During normal polarity, the north and south poles are aligned as they are now. With reversed polarity, the north and south poles are in the opposite position.During WWII, magnetometers attached to ships to search for submarines located an astonishing feature; the normal and reversed magnetic polarity of seafloor basalts creates a pattern. Stripes of normal polarity and reversed polarity alternate across the ocean bottom. These stripes also forms a mirror image of itself on either side of the mid-ocean ridges. But the stripes end abruptly at the edges of continents, sometimes at a deep sea trench. The characteristics of the rocks and sediments change with distance from the ridge axis as seen in the Table below.

A map of sediment thickness is found here. The oldest seafloor is near the edges of continents or deep sea trenches and is less than 180 million years old. Since the oldest ocean crust is so much younger than the oldest continental crust, scientists realized that seafloor was being destroyed in a relatively short time.

Seafloor Spreading Hypothesis

Scientists brought these observations together in the early 1960s to create the seafloor spreading hypothesis. In this hypothesis, hot buoyant mantle rises up a mid-ocean ridge, causing the ridge to rise upward. The hot magma at the ridge erupts as lava that forms new seafloor. When the lava cools, the magnetite crystals take on the current magnetic polarity and as more lava erupts, it pushes the seafloor horizontally away from ridge axis.The magnetic stripes continue across the seafloor. As oceanic crust forms and spreads, moving away from the ridge crest, it pushes the continent away from the ridge axis. If the oceanic crust reaches a deep sea trench, it sinks into the trench and is lost into the mantle. Scientists now know that the oldest crust is coldest and lies deepest in the ocean because it is less buoyant than the hot new crust.Seafloor spreading is the mechanism for Wegener’s drifting continents. Convection currents within the mantle take the continents on a conveyor-belt ride of oceanic crust that over millions of years takes them around the planet’s surface.