Drake Passage

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Drake Passage or Mar de Hoces between South America and Antarctica.

Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica.

Drake Passage showing the boundary points A, B, C, D, E and F accorded by the 1984 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Chile and Argentina.

The Drake Passage or Mar de Hoces -Sea of "Hoces"- is the body of water between the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn, Chile and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean (Scotia Sea) with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean. It is named after 16th century English privateer Sir Francis Drake, although he never sailed the Passage, opting instead for the less turbulent Strait of Magellan. It was the Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces who discovered and first sailed this passage in 1525^[1].

For this reason, some Spanish, Mexican, Argentinean and Chilean historians and sources call it Mar de Hoces (Sea of Sickles) after Francisco de Hoces. The second recorded European voyage through the passage was that of the Eendracht, captained by Willem Schouten in 1616.

The 800 km (500 miles) wide passage between Cape Horn and Greenwich Island is the shortest crossing from Antarctica to the rest of the world's land. The boundary between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is sometimes taken to be a line drawn from Cape Horn to Snow Island (130 km (80 miles) north of mainland Antarctica). Alternatively the meridian that passes through Cape Horn may be taken as the boundary. Both boundaries lie entirely within the Drake Passage.

The other two passages around Cape Horn, Magellan Strait and Beagle Channel, are very narrow, leaving little room for a ship, particularly a sailing ship, to maneuver. They can also become icebound, and sometimes the wind blows so strongly no sailing vessel can make headway against it. Hence most sailing ships preferred the Drake Passage, which is open water for hundreds of miles. The very small Diego Ramirez Islands lie about 50 km (30 mi) south of Cape Horn.

There is no significant land anywhere around the world at the latitudes of the Drake Passage, which is important to the unimpeded flow of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current which carries a huge volume of water (about 600 times the flow of the Amazon) through the Passage and around Antarctica.

Ships in the passage are often good platforms for the sighting of whales, dolphins and plentiful seabirds including giant petrels, other petrels, albatrosses and penguins.

The passage is known to have been closed until around 41 million years ago^[2] according to a chemical study of fish teeth found in oceanic sedimentary rock. Before the passage opened, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated entirely with Antarctica being much warmer and having no ice cap. The joining of the two great oceans started the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and cooled the continent significantly.

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[edit] References

^ Oyarzun, Javier, Expediciones españolas al Estrecho de Magallanes y Tierra de Fuego, 1976, Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica ISBN 84-7232-130-4
^ Helen Briggs. "Fossil gives clue to big chill", BBC News, 21 April 2006. Retrieved on 2007-11-01.