Sigsbee Deep Explained

The Sigsbee Deep^[1] (Mexico basin in the U. S. Board on Geographic Names Advisory Committee on Undersea Features Gazetteer)^[2] is a roughly triangular basin that is the deepest part of the Gulf of Mexico named for Charles Dwight Sigsbee.^[3] There is some confusion of names that apply to the basin or a particular point in the basin, with both being found in technical and popular literature applying to both basin and the coordinates.

Description

The basin is located in the southwestern quadrant of the gulf, with its closest point to the U.S. coast at 200miles southeast of Brownsville, Texas.^[4] The actual maximum depth is disputed, and estimates range between 3750mand4384mm (12,300feetand14,383feetm). The average depth of the gulf is roughly 1615m (5,299feet). The Sigsbee Abyssal Plain is the deepest and flattest sector of the deep basin.

Name/Location differences

The use of "Sigsbee" for the feature originates from Commander Charles Dwight Sigsbee's Gulf of Mexico surveys that defined the general features of the body while he was commanding officer of the USC&GS George S. Blake. "Sigsbee Deep" applied to the entire deep basin appears on some of the earliest charts of the Gulf of Mexico.

Sigsbee Deep is a variant name for the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) approved name of Mexico Basin for cartographic materials produced by federal agencies.^[5] A proposal by the United States renaming Sigsbee Deep, with coordinates of 23° 52′ N 91° 35′ W, to "Mexico Basin" was rejected by the Sixteenth Meeting of the GEBCO Subcommittee on Undersea Feature Names, the international authority on feature names, in 2003 with the note that it is "an historical name dating back to Sir John Murray." The committee discussion of the United States nomination Mexico Basin as having the coordinates 23° 52′ N 91° 35′ W as the Sigsbee Deep under consideration noted the Mexico Basin is in the GEBCO Gazetteer with coordinates of 22° 30′ N 95° 00′ W to 25° 00′ N 90° 00′ W.^{[6] [7]} The issue appears to be one of the entire basin or a particular point within the basin for application of the names. The United States' proposal to rename the 23° 52′ N 91° 35′ W point "Mexico basin was rejected while the ACUF Mexico basin with "Sigsbee deep" as an alternate name is given in the NGA database as 25° N 92° W.

There are other features with BGN approved names in the region in recognition of Sigsbee:^[8]

• Sigsbee Plain - 23° 30′ 00″ N 093° 00′ 00″ W
• Sigsbee Knolls - 23° 45′ 00″ N 092° 25′ 00″ W
• Sigsbee Escarpment - 26° 00′ 00″ N 092° 30′ 00″ W

External links

• Deep Sea Drilling Project: Leg 10 of the Glomar Challenger
• GULF OF MEXICO SEAFLOOR

Notes and References

1. The name "Sigsbee Deep" has sometimes been applied to Sigsbee Basin, a U. S. Board on Geographic Names approved name for a feature nominally at 42° 58' 00" N 069° 13' 00" W in the Gulf of Maine. See multiple features named for Sigsbee at National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's Undersea Features History.
2. Web site: IHO-IOC GEBCO Gazetteer of Undersea Feature Names (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet/Adobe PDF document formats) . IHO-IOC GEBCO . March 2011 . IHO-IOC GEBCO Gazetteer of Undersea Feature Names . International Hydrographic Organization . 12 February 2012.
3. Web site: Undersea Features History. http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20110511222341/http://earth%2Dinfo.nga.mil/gns/html/history.html#S. dead. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. 9 February 2012. 2011-05-11.
4. Web site: General Facts about the Gulf of Mexico . GulfBase.org . 2009-11-27 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20091210103009/http://www.gulfbase.org/facts.php . 2009-12-10 .
5. Web site: GeoNames Search Results (Sigsbee Deep) . National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) . 11 February 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120115173351/http://geonames.nga.mil/ggmaviewer/default.asp . 15 January 2012 . dead .
6. Web site: Sixteenth Meeting of the GEBCO Sub-committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN) . GEBCO Sub-committee on Undersea Feature Names . 10–12 April 2003 . International Hydrographic Bureau, Monaco . 11 February 2012.
7. The cited reference discusses differences in United States and IHO committee views and variations between names recommended by the Advisory Committee on Undersea Features (ACUF) of the U. S. BGN and the GEBCO committee.
8. Book: U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey . Report Of The Superintendent of the Coast And Geodetic Survey Showing The Progress Of The Work for the Fiscal Year Ending June, 1879 . 1879 . U.S. Government Printing Office . Washington, D.C. .