The Geikie Slide is a

submarine landslide Submarine landslides are marine landslides that transport sediment across the continental shelf and into the deep ocean. A submarine landslide is initiated when the downwards driving stress (gravity and other factors) exceeds the resisting str ...

on the seabed of the

North Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

to the northwest of

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 slide occurs in a region known as the Hebridean Slope, the

continental slope A continental margin is the outer edge of continental crust abutting oceanic crust under coastal waters. It is one of the three major zones of the ocean floor, the other two being deep-ocean basins and mid-ocean ridges. The continental margin ...

where the seabed drops from the continental shelf surrounding Britain (a depth of ''c.'' 200 m) into the deep ocean (a depth of ''c.''1800 m). Since 2014 an area of has been designated as a Nature Conservation Marine Protected Area under the name Geikie Slide and Hebridean Slope MPA. The Geikie Slide is named after the Scottish geologist, Sir

Archibald Geikie Sir Archibald Geikie (28 December 183510 November 1924) was a Scottish geologist and writer. Early life Geikie was born in Edinburgh in 1835, the eldest son of Isabella Thom and her husband James Stuart Geikie, a musician and music critic. T ...

. The ecology of the Hebridean Slope region alters with the descent into deeper, with the sands and gravels of the continental shelf giving way to mud at lower depths. The bottom of the slope provides a habitat for creatures such as mud shrimp and deep sea crab, which build burrows in the mud. Sea urchin,

sea spider Sea spiders are marine arthropods of the order Pantopoda ( ‘all feet’), belonging to the class Pycnogonida, hence they are also called pycnogonids (; named after ''Pycnogonum'', the type genus; with the suffix '). They are cosmopolitan, fou ...

, and deep sea worms are also found here, and the area is a

breeding ground In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

for fish such as blue ling.

References

External links

Into the (very) deep
- a blog post on a survey of the Geike Slide and Hebridean Slope from the JNCC Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas of Scotland Landforms of the Atlantic Ocean Geology of Scotland {{scotland-geo-stub