The Devil's Hole is a group of deep trenches in the
North Sea
The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian ...
about 200 km (125 mi) east of
Dundee
Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city and the List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mi ...
,
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
.
The features, which were first charted by ''
HMS Fitzroy'', were officially recorded in the
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...
's ''
Geographical Journal'' in 1931.
Soundings showed that the surrounding seabed is between 80 and 90 metres (260 - 300 ft) but the trenches are as deep as 230 m (750 ft). They run in a north-south direction and are on average between 1 and 2 km (.6 - 1.25 mi) in width and 20 to 30 km (12 - 18 mi) long.
Historically, fishermen have known about the Devil's Hole for generations because they have lost trawl nets on the trenches' steep sides. It is for this reason that the area took its name.
The gradient of the trench sides in the Devil's Hole is up to 10° in places. In a comparison, the
continental shelf
A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island ...
north west of
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
has an average gradient of 1°.
[
]
See also
Dogger Bank
Dogger Bank ( Dutch: ''Doggersbank'', German: ''Doggerbank'', Danish: ''Doggerbanke'') is a large sandbank in a shallow area of the North Sea about off the east coast of England.
During the last ice age the bank was part of a large landma ...
for map and links to similar places
References
{{coord, 56, 38, N, 0, 40, E, source:kolossus-fiwiki, display=title
Landforms of the North Sea
Oceanic trenches of the Atlantic Ocean