The Bengal Fan , also known as the Ganges Fan , is the largest submarine fan on Earth.
13-640: The Indus Fan is one of the most significant depositional feature of the offshore Indus basin. It is the second largest fan system in the world after the Bengal Fan between India, Bangladesh and the Andaman Islands . The Indus fan was deposited in an unconfined setting on the continental slope, rise and basin floor, covering much of the Arabian Sea . The entire fan extends over an area of 110,000 square kilometers with greater than 9 km of sediment accumulating near
26-465: A number of other notable species in the area, such as whale sharks , hammerhead sharks , tunas , groupers , hawksbill turtles , olive ridley turtles , masked boobies , great black-backed gulls , crested terns , swimming crabs , and so on. In the past, fishermen who lived nearby did not get any measurement by their native bamboo measurement system "Bam" ( Bengali : বাম ), and named it "Na Bam" ( Bengali : না বাম , No Bam or, Bamless ). It
39-656: A record size of about 1340 meters (400–450 m deeper than the surrounding mean seafloor depth of 1000 m). It has an average depth of about 1,200 meters underwater. This underwater trench is a part of the Bengal Fan , the largest underwater fan in the world. The fan in the Bay of Bengal, south of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta , is also known as Ganga Fan. The area has notable biodiversity of oceanic fauna such as cetaceans, sea turtles, fish, and sea birds. Among these, local populations of cetaceans have been
52-593: Is bordered to the west by the continental slope of eastern India, to the north by the continental slope of Bangladesh and to east by the northern part of Sunda Trench off Myanmar and the Andaman Islands , the accretionary wedge associated with subduction of the Indo-Australian Plate beneath the Sunda Plate and continues along the west side of the Ninety East Ridge . The Nicobar Fan, another lobe of
65-544: The Bay of Bengal up to 30 degrees latitude from where it began. To date, the oldest sediments recovered from the Bengal fan are from Early Miocene age. Their mineralogical and geochemical characteristics confirm their Himalayan origin and demonstrate that the Himalaya was already a major mountain range 20 million years ago. The fan completely covers the floor of the Bay of Bengal. It
78-580: The Bay of Bengal . The reserve covers an area of 1,636 km (632 sq mi). It was established on 26 October 2014, making it the first Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the country. The area hosts important habitats for several endangered creatures such as various species of dolphins and whales . The Swatch of No Ground (SoNG) is a 14 km wide trench in the Bay of Bengal. It is located 30 km from Dublar Char Islands, located in the Sundarbans . This deepest trench has
91-491: The fan, lies east of the Ninety East Ridge. The fan was first identified by bathymetric survey in the sixties by Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp which identified the abyssal cone and canyon structures. It was delineated and named by Joseph Curray and David Moore following a geological and geophysical survey in 1968. A deep sea canyon called Swatch of No Ground (SoNG) is located south of Sundarbans National Park and
104-436: The island of Dublar Char . This area hosts important habitats for cetaceans including endangered species such as various species of dolphins and Bryde's whales (see Swatch of No Ground Marine Protected Area ). 12°N 87°E / 12°N 87°E / 12; 87 Swatch of No Ground Marine Protected Area Swatch of No Ground Marine Protected Area is a protected area of Bangladesh in
117-419: The largest channel-levee systems (CLS). These channel-levee systems act as conduits for carrying and depositing sediments into the deeper part of the basin. The coarser grained sediments are deposited in the channel belts whereas the finer grained silts and clays are deposited along the levees. This arrangement of sediments is ideal for stratigraphic plays and is why these channel-levee systems are important to
130-618: The petroleum industry. Bengal Fan It is located in the Bay of Bengal , being about 3,000 km (1,900 mi) long, 1,430 km (890 mi) wide with a maximum thickness of 16.5 km (10.3 mi). The fan resulted from the uplift and erosion of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau produced by the collision between the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate . Most of
143-434: The primal focus of past studies; core species include Bryde's whales , spinner dolphins , Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins , Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins , pantropical spotted dolphins , Irrawaddy dolphins , Indo-Pacific finless porpoises , and species with less-frequency include minke whales , rough-toothed dolphins and false killer whales . Some of these species are genetically unique and endangered. There are
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#1732848180630156-740: The sediment is supplied by the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers which supply the Lower Meghna delta in Bangladesh and the Hoogly delta in West Bengal (India). Several other large rivers in Bangladesh and India provide smaller contributions. Turbidity currents have transported the sediment through a series of submarine canyons , some of which are more than 1,500 miles (2,414 km) in length, to be deposited in
169-591: The toe-of-slope. The Indus Basin was created through the erosion of Karakoram and the Western Himalayas . Fan sedimentation is estimated to have begun at the end of the Oligocene or beginning of the Miocene , during a period of faster Himalayan exhumation, possibly linked to Monsoon intensification. The fan rapidly gained sediment during the middle Miocene. The upper Indus Fan, both ancient and recent, consists some of
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