NRP - Admiral Gago Coutinho - Bank of the Giant

The NRP ship "Almirante Gago Coutinho" continues to map the seabed of the Azores and reveals extraordinary images of the seabed, in this case, the Bank of the Giant.

The Giant Submarine Hill is embedded in the Atlantic Middle Crest, a chain of mountains in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with general NE-SW orientation and which separates the tectonic plate from America to West with the Euro-Asian and African east.

The Atlantic Middle Crest results from the extrusion of basaltic volcanism in this area of ​​the ocean that as it is expelled pushes the American plate to the West and the Euro-Asian plates and the African plate to the east. The ridge is thus elevated relative to the surrounding seabed, consisting of a series of volcanic buildings with general NE-SW orientation and buildings with WNW-ESSE orientation resulting from the extrusion of volcanism along transient faults (perpendicular to the general orientation of the Crest ).

In one of the figures are two volcanic buildings now separated of 11 km that were implanted along tectonic structures with orientation NE-SW. Considering the mean spacing between the American plate and the Euro-Asian and African plates (about 20 mm / year) one can estimate that the original volcanic structure separated about 550 thousand years ago.