Page 193 - NS-2 Textbook

188 NAUTICAL SCIENCES

Aerial view of the U.S, naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

state of severe economic depression that has persisted to
the present day. This has led several times in the past,
most recently during the summer of 1994, to large-scale
attempts at illegal immigration into the United States by
its population. During these incidents several thousand
Cuban refugees used makeshift watercraft of all imagin-
able descriptions to try to make it across the Straits of
Florida to land in the southern part of that state. Most of
them were stopped and rescued from their often over-
crowded and unseaworthy craft by U.s. Coast Guard
and Navy ships and patrol boats. They were then taken
to temporary camps at the Guantanamo Naval Base
pending evenhtal return to Castro's Cuba.
Additional incidents of a similar nature can almost During several summers in the mid-1990s thousands of Cubans tried
to cross the Straits of Florida in rickety seacraft to try to immigrate
certainly be expected in the fuhlre, as long as Cuba con-
illegally into the United States. u.s. Coast Guard
tinues to be an economically unstable force for unrest in
the area.
toward the pole. TIlat portion of the Asiatic continental
shelf under the Barents Sea north of Russia and Scandi-
THE ARCTIC OCEAN
navia extends more than 1,000 miles to sea, past Spits-
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest of the major oceans. It bergen (Spits' -bur-gan) and Franz Josef Land.
has an area of 4,700,000 square miles with an average Minerals. Along the Asian side of the Arctic Ocean
depth of 3,250 feel. The deepest part of the ocean is the are five seas: Chukchi (Ch06k'-che), East Siberian,
Abyssal Plain I'UlUling across the North Pole at a depth of Laptev, Kara, and Barents. Much geologic exploration for
15,091 feel. The Arctic basin is divided by tlu'ee major minerals has been done there in the last few years. Large
submarine ridges that separate four large undersea oil and natural gas deposits probably exist in the Laptev
plains and a number of smaller plains. The continental Sea north of Siberia.
shelf north of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland extends The continental shelf off Alaska has also been the
about 50 to 125 nllies from shore. However, the conti- scene of much oil drilling. Major oil discoveries were
nental shelf north of Asia extends from 300 to 600 miles made in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Prudhoe Bay.