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The shelf surrounding an island is known as an "insular shelf." The continental margin, between the continental shelf and the abyssal plain, comprises a steep continental slope, surrounded by the flatter continental rise, in which sediment from the continent above cascades down the slope and accumulates as a pile of sediment at the base of the ...
The terms Island Southeast Asia and Insular Southeast Asia are sometimes given the same meaning as Maritime Southeast Asia. [ a ] Other definitions restrict Island Southeast Asia to just the islands between mainland Southeast Asia and the continental shelf of Australia and New Guinea.
Profile illustrating the shelf, slope and rise. 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.
Geologically separated from the Lesser Antilles by the Anegada Passage and from the Greater Antilles by the Mona passage, all the islands except for Saint Croix lie on the same carbonate platform and insular shelf, known as the Puerto Rico Bank, and same tectonic plate, known as the Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate.
Often the Caribbean islands are considered part of North America, but Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao (ABC islands), and Trinidad and Tobago lie on the continental shelf of South America. On the other hand, the Venezuelan Isla Aves and the Colombian San Andrés and Providencia lie on the North American shelf.
The Insular Islands were an extended chain of volcanic islands forming an arc in what is now the Pacific Ocean during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. The islands formed by subduction and melting of the Farallon Plate along a fragment (or microplate) upon which they rose called the Insular Plate .
The Curaçaoan insular shelf's sharp drop-off known as the "Blue Edge" is often visited by scuba diving tourists. [90] Coral reefs for snorkeling and scuba diving can be reached without a boat. The southern coast has calm waters as well as many small beaches, such as Jan Thiel and Cas Abou.
The formal definition is "the region which comprises the surface of the sea, waters overlying the seabed, seabed and subsoil within the atlantic expanse which projects from the coast until the outer limit of the Brazilian continental shelf". [44]