Speakers Bank
- Landsat 7
- Path 145, Row 064
- 18 Dec 1999
Situated in the northwestern regions of the archipelago, 19 km northwest from Blenheim Reef and 238 km north from Diego Garcia, Speakers Bank is the northernmost bank of the archipelago. The second largest of the entirely submarine banks of the Chagos Archipelago, Speakers Bank covers an area of around 850 km², measuring 40 km in length (southwest to northeast) and is up to 23 km across.
The bank is the remains of a sunken atoll formation — the submerged reef rim and deeper lagoon area can easily be picked out in the above image. The shallowest regions are found over the rim where depths of between 5 and 15 m occur — at low tide coral heads in the south may break the surface.
image: millenium coral reefs landsat archive/usf millenium global coral reef mapping project/nasa seawifs/nasa jsc
