Misteriosa Bank

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The Misteriosa Bank is a submerged bank or atoll in the Caribbean Sea, located at 18°48′N, 83°54′W - approximately equidistant from Mexico (380 km), Honduras (345 km) and Cuba (320 km). The bank is 39 km long and 3 to 11 km wide. The area is 322 km² [1]. Immediately south of it is Rosario Bank. The closest piece of land is the Swan Islands, Honduras, 140 km to the south and separated from it by the >5000 meters deep Cayman Trench, which makes the bank fall within the EEZ of Honduras. The reported depth is 20 metres on the average [2] or up to 22 meters, with depths of 14-18 meters along the rim [3], or 12.8 to 49 m [4]. It is part of the Cayman Ridge [5][6],

A buoy has been anchored to the seabed of this submerged peak of a sea mountain range that appears to have been claimed by the Cayman Islands, a British dependency. The placing of the buoy was filmed by a German film crew and broadcast by Arte television on satellite.

An investment scam, New Utopia, maintains no state claims it, and wants to build a kind of microcountry on top of it, using concrete blocks. Others claim it is in the EEZs of both Honduras and the Cayman Islands[7]. Colombia also claims the Bank, though indirectly.

[edit] Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin's Coral Reefs mentions the Misteriosa Bank as an example of the sharply declining coral reef:

"Besides the coast-banks, there are many of various dimensions which stand quite isolated; these closely resemble each other, they lie from two or three to twenty or thirty fathoms under water, and are composed of sand, sometimes firmly agglutinated, with little or no coral; their surfaces are smooth and nearly level, shelving only to the amount of a few fathoms, very gradually all round towards their edges, where they plunge abruptly into the unfathomable sea. This steep inclination of their sides, which is likewise characteristic of the coast-banks, is very remarkable: I may give as an instance, the Misteriosa Bank, on the edges of which the soundings change in 250 fathoms horizontal distance, from 11 to 210 fathoms..."