ALBERT

Description: The lower continental rise of Morocco’s Atlantic Margin contains three varying morphologies of buried deepwater sediment waves. The 3D mapping of a [Formula: see text] seismic survey acquired in the Safi Haute Mer seismic block revealed numerous linear features that range from small, less than 17-m-thick Jurassic-age amplitude striations up to 110-m-thick migrating Cretaceous contourite sediment waves. Early proto-Atlantic deposition in Safi Haute Mer initiated in the Triassic, with syn- and postrift accumulation in basement half-grabens basinward of the modern Moroccan salt front. Sedimentation continued through the Mesozoic with deposition of turbidites, progradation of clinoforms, and culminating in multiple Late Cretaceous, regionally expansive, mass-transport deposits ([Formula: see text]). Tertiary stratigraphy consists of multiple thin, pelagic drapes and unconformities. The complex history of sedimentation and tectonics gave rise to three styles of sediment waves found within the study area: (1) type J1 — small and poorly imaged, Jurassic age, locally generated wave forms that have wavelengths of up to 12 km and crest-to-crest separations of less than 1 km with little or no vertical expression; (2) type K1 — early Aptian constructional sediment waves ([Formula: see text] thick) built by contour currents that traveled in and near a contourite moat at the base of a seafloor high produced by shallowly buried mobile salt; and (3) type K2 — latest Albian and earliest post-Albian sediment waves built by along-slope currents on a relatively stable slope, showing evidence of updip migration. The type K2 sediment wavefield exhibits wave heights of 40 m and crest-to-crest separations of 1 km, and it is continuous over the entire study area.