Everything about The Muirfield Seamount totally explained
The
Muirfield Seamount is a submarine mountain located in the
Indian Ocean approximately 130 kilometers (70 nautical miles) southwest of the
Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The Cocos Islands are an Australian territory, and therefore the Muirfield Seamount is within in Australia's
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Muirfield Seamount is a submerged
archipelago, approximately 1.5 miles in diameter and 16–18 meters below the surface of the sea. A 1999 biological survey of the seamount performed by the Australian
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) revealed that the area is depauperate.
The Muirfield Seamount was discovered accidentally in 1973 when the cargo ship
MV Muirfield (a merchant vessel named after
Muirfield,
Scotland) was motoring in waters charted at a depth of >5,000 meters, when she suddenly struck an unknown object, resulting in extensive damage to her
keel. In 1983,
HMAS Moresby, a
Royal Australian Navy survey ship, surveyed the area where
Muirfield was damaged, and charted in detail this previously unsuspected hazard to
navigation.
The likelihood of such a large rock hazard remaining undetected by a deep draft ship with functioning modern depth-finding equipment (including
side-scan sonar) is fairly low. However, some large vessels don't carry side-scan sonar, and among vessels that do, the equipment may be in disrepair or operators may not know how to use the equipment. Therefore, ships continue to come to grief on seamounts.
The dramatic accidental discovery of the Muirfield Seamount is often cited as an example of limitations in the vertical
datum accuracy of some offshore areas as represented on oceanic navigational charts, especially on
small-scale charts. A similar incident involving a passenger ship occurred in 1992 when the
Cunard liner
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 struck a submerged rock off
Block Island in the
Atlantic Ocean. More recently, the
USS San Francisco (SSN-711) submarine ran into an uncharted seamount in 2005 at a speed of 35 knots, sustaining serious damage and killing one seaman.
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