Euxine abyssal plain

The Euxine abyssal plain is a physiographic province of the Black Sea, an abyssal plain in its central parts. Its name comes from the Ancient Greek name Euxeinos Pontos (Εὔξεινος Πόντος) of the Black Sea. The principal escarpments leading down to the plain are the Crimean Escarpment in the north, the Caucasus Escarpment in the northeast, the Canik (or East Pontic) Escarpment in the southeast, and the Küre (or West Pontic) Escarpment in the southwest.[1]

Illustration of the Black Sea, from NASA’s World Wind globe software

It represents 12.2% of the Black Sea area with a very gentle gradient of 1:1,000. A small part of the abyssal plain is split off by the Danubian fan, a relict alluvial fan of sediment.[2]

Its depth ranges between 2,000 and 2,200 m, with a maximum depth of 2,212 m[3] south of Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula. [4]

References
  1. Flanders Marine Institute. "Marine Gazetteer: Black Sea". 2005 Accessed 19 Mar 2014.
  2. "International Seminar on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies" p. 146
  3. Maximum depth of 2,206 was measured by echo-sounding by Atlantis II in 1969, as reported in Chapter: "Bathymetry and Microtopography of Black Sea: Structure" of the 20th Memoir The Black Sea — Geology, Chemistry, and Biology of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (1974), and this number is given in some of sources
  4. "Remote Sensing of the European Seas" (2008) ISBN 1-4020-6771-2, p. 17
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