Satellite image of the Cayman Trough.

The Cayman Trough, or Cayman Trench, also called Bartlett Deep, or Bartlett Trough, is a complex transform fault zone which contains a small spreading ridge on the floor of the western Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. It forms part of the tectonic boundary between the North American Plate and the Caribbean Plate. It extends from the Windward Passage, going south of the Sierra Maestra Cuba toward Guatemala. The transform continues onshore as the Motagua Fault which cuts across Guatemala and back offshore under the Pacific Ocean where it intersects the Middle America Trench subduction zone. The relatively narrow trough trends east-northeast to west-southwest and has a maximum depth of 7,686 meters (25,216 ft); it is the deepest point in the Caribbean Sea. Within the trough is a slowly spreading north-south ridge which may be the result of an offset or gap of approximately 420 kilometers (260 mi) along the main fault trace.

During the Eocene the trough was the site of a subduction zone which formed the volcanic arc of the Cayman Ridge and the Sierra Maestra volcanic terrain of Cuba to the north as the northeastward moving Caribbean Plate was subducted along the Cuban microplate (Sigurdsson).

As of 2008 the Cayman Trough has not been explored; a UK team from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton (NOCS) equipped with an autonomously controlled, robot submarine, are set to begin mapping the full extent of the trench and finding the volcanic vents on the ocean floor.^[1]

The 1989 science fiction film The Abyss is set in the depths of the trench.

Notes

References

• Goreau, P. D. E. 1983 Tectonic Evolution of the North Central Caribbean Plate Margin. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MA.; Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Cambridge. Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Washington, DC. Sep 1983. 248p. Report: WHOI-83-34.
• Ten Brink, Uri S., et al., 2001, Asymmetric seafloor spreading: crustal thickness variations and transitional crust in Cayman Trough from gravity", GSA Meeting Abstract
• Roberts, H. H. 1994 Reefs and lagoons of Grand Cayman Monographiae biologicae (Brunt, MA; Davies, JE eds). Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, Ma The Hague. ISBN 0-7923-2462-5
• Ruellan, E. et.al., 2003, Morphology and Tectonics of the Mid-Cayman Spreading Center, EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abtract
• Scotese, Christopher R. 1999. Evolution of the Caribbean Sea (100 mya - Present) Collision of Cuba with Florida Platform and Opening of the Cayman Trough. PALEOMAP Project http://www.scotese.com/caribanim.htm
• Sigurdsson, H., et al., 1999, TIMING, NATURE, AND SOURCE AREAS OF CARIBBEAN VOLCANISM, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, Scientific Results, Chapter 20

See also

• Oceanic trench

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