Burdwood Bank

The Burdwood Bank, called Namuncurá in Argentina and other countries, is an undersea bank with a prominence of approximately, part of the Scotia Arc projecting some from Cape Horn in the South Atlantic Ocean and located some south of the Falkland Islands. Argentina claims economic rights over the whole of the bank, while the United Kingdom has designated about half of the bank as part of the Falklands Outer Economic Zone.
The Burdwood Bank is one of the four morphological features defined by the isobath off the coast of the Argentine — the other three being the Patagonian Shelf, Isla de los Estados and the Falkland Islands. It forms a barrier to the northward flow of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The bank itself is some from east to west and some from north to south. The channel to the west of the bank is about wide and deep while the channel to the east of the bank is wide and has a depth of up to deep.
Burdwood Bank was the location of several landslides some three million years ago. This in turn produced tsunami-like events that hit the Falkland Islands on its southern coast. Estimates of the size of the waves vary from up to at the southern coast and up to where the capital, Port Stanley, is located.

Fauna

Birds in this area include various species of albatrosses and petrels that feed on the banks and waters of Burdwood Bank: black-browed albatross, grey-headed albatross, wandering albatross, Tristan albatross, northern giant petrel, southern giant petrel, chin petrel White, as well as penguins: Magellanic penguin, rockhopper penguin, gentoo penguin, king penguin, and pinnipeds such as sea lions and elephant seals. The Burdwood Bank generates conditions that favor fishing productivity in the area. In the waters surrounding the bank are breeding and spawning sites for many fish species. The species community on the bank is dominated by the small notothenids Patagonotothen guntheri and Patagonian toothfish. There are also very high levels of chlorophyll.