Late Quaternary Contourite Drifts on the Kara Sea Shelf

Contourite drifts were found for the first time on the SW Kara Sea shelf based on the analysis of bathymetry and seismoacoustic data obtained in the cruises 41 (2019) and 49 (2020) of R/V Akademik Nikolai Strakhov . These drifts are confined to a narrow NS depression with a depth of 240 m. They are separated from underlying sediments by the basal unconformity caused by the bottom current formed in the marine environment after melting of the Barents–Kara ice sheet during the Late Pleistocene–Holocene time. Hydrological measurements carried out in the cruise 89-1 (2022) of R/V Akademik Mstislav Keldysh made it possible to reveal the bottom current with a measured velocity of up to 10 cm/s.