Boating Uses, Economic Significance, and Information Inventory for North Carolina's Offshore Area, the Point Volume 3

The U.S. East Coast continental slope from Norfolk Canyon south to Cape Lookout, North Carolina represents a dramatic physiographic and sedimentological transition between the Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB) province of major submarine canyons and the South Atlantic Bight province of the Blake Plateau (BP) (Pratt and Heezen 1964; Uchupi and Emery 1967; Rowe and Menzies 1968; Rhoads 1993). The northern portion of the transition region, beginning just south of Norfolk Canyon, approximates physiographic, sedimentary and faunistic conditions characteristic of the overall MAB (Blake et al. 1987). The central portion of this region, just north of Cape Hatteras, is unique hydrographically: 1) as the zone where the northward flowing Gulf Stream meets the southward flowing Virginia current (Ford et al. 1952; Bumpus and Lauzier 1965; Heezen 1968; Norcross and Stanley 1967; Csanady and Hamilton 1988), and 2) as the zone where the Gulf Stream crosses the underlying southward flowing Western Boundary Undercurrent