the.com/continental shelf
The shallow, drowned edge of a continent, pretending the ocean starts later than it does.
means The gently sloping, shallow seabed that fringes a continent before the ocean floor drops away steeply into the deep sea.
from A 19th/20th-century scientific compound, not a folk tale: 'continental' from Latin 'continens' (holding together, continuous land), and 'shelf' from a Germanic word for a flat ledge or plank. Geologists and oceanographers bolted the two together once sounding surveys revealed that continents don't simply end at the coastline — they keep going underwater as a shallow ledge before plunging down the continental slope to the true ocean floor.
- actual boundary
- Ends at the shelf break, not the coastline
- legal reach
- Countries can claim rights 200 nautical miles out
- resource jackpot
- Holds most of the world's offshore oil and fish
- depth logic
- Usually under 200 meters, then plunges sharply