UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 42 of 150

Correct — A, North Atlantic Ridge. The Telegraphic (Telegraph) Plateau is a broad, comparatively shallow and gently undulating submarine platform lying in the NORTH Atlantic Ocean, on the line between Newfoundland and Ireland — roughly 3,200 m deep along the surveyed cable route. It was charted and named in the 1850s by the US Navy oceanographer Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury, who compiled soundings from ships' logs and judged this stretch of sea floor so even and so free of rugged relief that it was ideal for laying a telegraph cable — hence the name. In the standard textbook description of Atlantic floor relief, this rise is treated as part of the ridge complex of the North Atlantic, and the first transatlantic telegraph cable (1858, with a lasting cable following in 1866) was laid straight across it.

• (b)South Atlantic Ridge — Right ocean, wrong hemisphere. The Telegraph Plateau lies between Newfoundland and Ireland — far north of the equator — because it was surveyed for a cable joining North America to Europe. The South Atlantic ridge segment runs between South America and Africa and has nothing to do with the transatlantic telegraph.
• (c)Indian Ocean Ridge — Wrong ocean altogether. The Indian Ocean's ridge system carries quite different names — the Carlsberg Ridge, the Central Indian Ridge and the South-West and South-East Indian ridges; no 'Telegraphic' feature belongs to it.
• (d)None of these — The classic 'escape hatch' option, and it fails here because option (a) is a valid attribution — the feature is a North Atlantic one. Pick 'None of these' only after you have positively eliminated all three named choices.

The ocean floor is not a featureless plain. It is divided into the continental shelf, the continental slope, the deep-sea (abyssal) plain and the deeps or trenches, and superimposed on these are mid-oceanic ridges, submarine plateaux, rises, seamounts and guyots. A submarine plateau is a raised, flat-topped tract of sea floor standing above the surrounding abyssal plain — the Telegraph Plateau in the North Atlantic is the textbook example, remembered because it made the first intercontinental telegraph link physically possible.

You are not expected to have memorised an obscure bathymetric name. Reason from the word itself: 'Telegraphic' points to the transatlantic telegraph cable, and the transatlantic cable ran from Ireland (Valentia) to Newfoundland — the North Atlantic. That single association eliminates the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean at once, and 'None of these' then becomes untenable. Exams often plant a name whose origin story is the clue.

• The Telegraph (Telegraphic) Plateau is a submarine plateau of the North Atlantic, on the Ireland–Newfoundland line, about 3,200 m deep along the cable route.
• It was named by Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury of the US Navy, a pioneer of oceanography, from soundings collected out of ships' logs in the 1850s.
• The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid across it in 1858; it failed within weeks, and a durable cable followed in 1866.
• The mid-oceanic ridge of the Atlantic is S-shaped, following the outline of the facing coasts; textbook accounts call its northern portion the Dolphin Rise and its southern portion the Challenger Rise.
• The ridge system of the Indian Ocean is made up of the Carlsberg, Central Indian, South-West Indian and South-East Indian ridges — a useful contrast set for elimination questions.

• Choosing 'None of these' reflexively when a name looks unfamiliar. In UPPSC papers 'None of these' is far more often a decoy than the answer.
• Assuming any 'plateau' must be on land — plateaux, ridges and rises are standard sea-floor landforms too.
• Mixing up the ridge names across oceans: 'Carlsberg' belongs to the Indian Ocean, not the Atlantic, and 'Dolphin/Challenger' to the Atlantic, not the Pacific.

Both UPPSC and UPSC test ocean-floor relief by asking you to place a named feature in the right ocean — sometimes as a straight one-liner like this, sometimes as a match-the-list of trenches or ridges against oceans.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid over the Telegraph Plateau, which lies between

  • (a)Newfoundland and Ireland
  • (b)Brazil and West Africa
  • (c)Madagascar and Western Australia
  • (d)Iceland and Greenland

  Answer(a) Newfoundland and Ireland — the North Atlantic route surveyed by Matthew Fontaine Maury; the cable ran from Valentia in Ireland to Newfoundland.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following ridges is NOT a feature of the Atlantic Ocean floor?

  • (a)Dolphin Rise
  • (b)Challenger Rise
  • (c)Carlsberg Ridge
  • (d)Walvis Ridge

  Answer(c) Carlsberg Ridge — it lies in the Arabian Sea sector of the Indian Ocean; the other three are Atlantic features.