Did you know…

Gakkel ridge

Located in the eastern Arctic between Greenland and Siberia and lying beneath the Arctic Ocean is the Gakkel ridge.  The Gakkel ridge is the deepest mid-ocean ridge which range in depth between 3 to 5 kilometers and extends some 1,800 km. 

Map of Gakkel ridge

Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

A mid-ocean ridge is a crack in the earth’s crust pulling apart the sea floor and allowing hot magma from deep within the earth’s mantle to form new sea floor.   The global mid-ocean ridge chain separates numerous tectonic plates and extends some 60,000 kilometers –forming the earth’s largest volcano.

The Gakkel ridge is an extension of the mid-Atlantic ridge and is the slowest moving of all the mid-ocean ridges, presently moving at a rate of about 2.5 centimeters per year.  For the most part, mid-ocean ridges produce volcanic activity which in the aspsect of the Gakkel ridge is mainly in the form of hydrothermal vents.  Hydrothermal vents release hot spring water at approximately 400 degrees Celsius and are loaded in dissolved chemicals.  As the hot spring water rises from the hydrothermal vents it forms a visible pattern of smoke known as a plume.