Atlantic Abyssal Plain

30°N, 40°W (approx.)

Floor of the North Atlantic — vast, largely unmapped abyssal terrain

[from the public record]

30.0000, -40.0000 · view on OpenStreetMap →

What's documented

The Atlantic abyssal plains are extensive flat areas of deep ocean floor lying between roughly 3,000 and 6,000 meters depth, on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. They are among the flattest surfaces on Earth. Most of this terrain remains unmapped at land-equivalent resolution — as of 2026, a smaller fraction has been bathymetrically resolved than the surface of Mars.

Notable & intriguing

Less of the Atlantic seafloor has been mapped at high resolution than the surface of Mars or the Moon. As of 2024 the Seabed 2030 project reported ~26% of the ocean floor surveyed at ship-quality bathymetric resolution.

Seabed 2030 / GEBCO annual report, 2024.
The abyssal plains are among the flattest surfaces in the Solar System — typical slopes are less than 1:1,000 over hundreds of kilometers.

Heezen & Hollister, The Face of the Deep, 1971.
The Sohm Abyssal Plain off Nova Scotia was the disposal site for large quantities of obsolete chemical munitions in the late 1940s and 1950s, and at least 51 nuclear weapons are reported lost at sea in cumulative Cold War accidents — many in Atlantic waters.

U.S. Navy Broken Arrows declassified summary, 1981.

Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.

Public-record imagery

Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the abyssal context. Wikipedia Commons · Public domain · Mangwanani · 2008

Bathymetric map of the Atlantic seafloor. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs the full length of the basin — a 16,000 km submarine mountain chain, only a fraction of which is mapped at land-equivalent resolution. Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · NOAA

Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharp's hand-painted World Ocean Floor map (Berann manuscript, 1977). Tharp first recognized the Mid-Atlantic Ridge's central rift valley in 1953 from echo-sounding profiles — a discovery initially dismissed as 'girl talk' by male colleagues. Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · Berann, Heinrich C., Heezen, Bruce C., Tharp, Marie. · 1977

Marie Tharp at Lamont-Doherty. Her bathymetric maps transformed plate tectonics from contested hypothesis to scientific consensus. Bob Ballard, who used her work to locate hydrothermal vents and the Titanic, stands at her left. Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · Credit Line: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Bill Woodward, USNS Kane Collection · 1968

Referenced in the codex

1. We Are the Substrate The claim, the substrate-logic argument in three points, the Apkallu emerging from the deep waters to teach civilization. The long study, said plainly.
2. The Operators, Several Kinds A field guide to the menagerie. Stewards, Technicians, Watchers, and the question of the Apkallu. With an argument that the operator-side has been a coalition, not a monolith, the whole time.
3. The Observers Above The third layer. The rectangle under the Vostok ice. The same rectangle in two other oceans. The man at Starbucks's "nearby galaxies" claim, taken seriously without being believed.