Ross Sea

Ross Sea, southern extension of the Southern Ocean, which, along with the vast Ross Ice Shelf at its head, makes a deep indentation in the circular continental outline of Antarctica. The sea is a generally shallow marine region approximately 370,000 square miles (960,000 square km) in area, centred at about 75° S 175° W and lying between Cape Adare in northern Victoria Land on the west and Cape Colbeck on Edward VII Peninsula on the east. The northern limit lies approximately along the edge of the continental shelf and the southern limit along a great barrier wall of ice marking the front of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Overshadowed by the towering ranges of Victoria Land, the floor of the Ross Sea extends northward as a broad shelf before plunging into the deeps of the Southeast Pacific Basin along a line from Scott Island to Cape Colbeck. The broader, western half of the sea shoals to less than 1,000 feet (300 metres) in several wide areas, the southwesternmost culminating in the small and rocky volcanic pile of Franklin Island. Most of the floor is less than 3,000 feet (900 metres) deep. The coastal region is dotted with modern volcanos and older dissected volcanic piles of an extensive alkaline-basalt area (McMurdo Volcanics) consisting of Cape Adare, Cape Hallett, Mount Melbourne, Franklin and Ross islands, on the western coast, and a number of lesser-known centres in western Marie Byrd Land, on the eastern coast.

The Ross Sea is one of the least-iced and most-accessible of Antarctica’s fringe seas. Relatively easy access made this region the traditional avenue for mounting expeditions into the continental interior. The sea was first penetrated on January 5, 1841, by the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, commanded by James Clark Ross on an unsuccessful attempt to reach the south magnetic pole. Since then various points on the Ross Ice Shelf have served as bases for exploration parties from Norway, Great Britain, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand. All coastal regions have been geologically explored, at least in reconnaissance, and the southern Victoria Land region near McMurdo Sound has become the most thoroughly known on the continent. Rich with history and scenery, the Ross Sea is now regularly traversed by tourist vessels.

Several possibilities exist with regard to the origin of the Ross Sea continental embayment. Early geologists believed the Ross Sea to extend as a subglacial trench, the hypothetical Ross–Weddell Graben, to connect with the Weddell Sea. Since then, discovery of the intervening Ellsworth Mountains has disproved the hypothesis. Geophysical studies on the Ross Ice Shelf indicate the presence of an underlying thick section of seismically low-velocity, probably sedimentary, rocks. The embayment, therefore, may be either a downfaulted block of continental rocks, including the Beacon Group, or it may be a downwarped basin filled with sedimentary rocks.

Flora and fauna are typical of other southerly Antarctic marine regions. The nutrient-rich seawater supports abundant planktonic life which in turn provides food for larger forms, including fish, seals, whales, and seabirds and shorebirds. Among the latter, hordes of Adélie and emperor penguins populate rookeries at a number of places around the Ross Sea.

The Ross Sea is strongly influenced by the coastal East-Wind Drift that sets up a vast clockwise gyre accompanied by deepwater upwelling. Surface currents move generally westward along the ice shelf front and thence northward along Victoria Land, where they meet the West-Wind Drift. Movements are complicated by shoals and tidal currents. Water less than 1,000 feet deep has a minimum temperature of about 28.2 °F (−2.1 °C). Mean surface water temperature in McMurdo Sound is about 28.8 °F (−1.8 °C).

In October 2016, 24 countries and the European Union agreed to establish the world’s largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea. Under the agreement, which took force in December 2017, commercial fishing is banned in a zone covering 600,000 square miles (1,600,000 square km) of ocean, including the Ross Ice Shelf, the Balleny Islands, and the ocean surrounding two seamounts.