Mapping giant mass transport deposits (MTDs) for delineating the extended Continental Shelf of Spain to the West of Canary Islands according UNCLOS Art. 76

Abstract

On 19 December 2014, Spain presented a third partial submission for the delineation of the Extended Continental in the area west of the Canary Islands to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS). The Canary Islands are located within a NE-SW 1,350 km long ridge of hotspot-inferred volcanic islands and seamounts (composed by more of 100, from Lars to Tropic seamounts). This submission has been documented with an extensive dataset specifically obtained for the project during ten oceanographic cruises between 2010 and 2014 aboard the Spanish research vessels Hespérides, Sarmiento de Gamboa and Miguel Oliver. This new dataset allows to investigate an area of 440,000 km2 with acoustic backscatter images and multibeam echosounder bathymetric (MBES) data (Simrad EM-12, EM-120 and EM-302, and Atlas HYDROSWEEP DS), a dense network of 65,800 km of very-high resolution (VHR) seismic lines (including chirp parametric source TOPAS PS-18 and Atlas PARASOUND P-35) and 4,471 km of multichannel seismic reflection lines (MCS) acquired with an array of air-guns yielding a total volume of 4,600 inch3 (75.38 L) and a 3,500 m long streamer composed of 280 channels.