The proportion of the worldwide ocean floor that has been accurately mapped is gradually increasing.
It is presently barely shy of a quarter of the earth’s surface that is covered by water – 23,4 percent.
Improved seafloor maps aid in navigation and conservation, among other applications.
A year ago, around 10 million square kilometers (3.8 million square miles) of new bathymetric (depth) data were uploaded. This area roughly corresponds to the landmass of Europe.
The information was provided at the second United Nations Ocean Conference, which is now taking place in Lisbon, Portugal.
The majority of this additional data is not the result of recent mapping efforts, but rather the outcome of governments, organizations, and businesses consenting to release their archives.
It is believed that an additional 10 to 15 percent of information is still hidden on servers, in part because the owners fear revealing commercial or defense secrets if they share the data.
“But they do not need to be concerned,” said Jamie McMichael-Phillips, director of Seabed 2030, an organization attempting to coordinate global efforts to create a comprehensive image of the ocean floor.
We are attempting to convey that we do not require high-resolution data. The high resolution is acceptable; we can work with it. However, a lower resolution is okay.
One depth value in an area approximately the size of a European football pitch, 100 meters by 100 meters, will not reveal national or commercial secrets.
This information is required for a variety of reasons.
Sea maps are crucial not just for safe navigation, but also for the management and conservation of fisheries. Typically, marine life congregates around underwater mountains. Each seamount is a hotspot for biodiversity.
In addition, the rocky bottom affects the behavior of ocean currents and vertical water mixing. This knowledge is necessary to improve the models used to predict future climate change, as oceans play a crucial role in the global distribution of heat.
Our current understanding of slightly over three-quarters of the planet’s underwater geography is limited to low-resolution satellite data that infer the existence of tall seamounts and deep valleys based on the gravitational influence these structures have on the sea surface. Over the mass of a massive underwater mountain, water accumulates and there is a slight dip where there is a trench.
It’s extremely intelligent, but an underwater mountain hundreds of meters tall can still be missed by such observations.
The RRS Sir David Attenborough, the United Kingdom’s new polar vessel, is designed to map millions of square kilometers of ocean floor throughout its career. The image seen above depicts the ship’s hull in a dry dock. The yellow rectangle in the middle is a synthetic material cover for the 8-meter-long array of transmitting transducers for the multibeam echo-sounding system in deep water.
Presentational grey line
The Seabed 2030 initiative, which is supported by the Nippon Foundation of Japan, encourages anyone venturing offshore to turn on their sonar equipment and take depth readings. In addition to readings from large vessels, modest ocean-going yachts equipped with data loggers can also contribute.
American explorer Victor Vescovo is one of the stars of Seabed 2030. The Texan billionaire is employing a submersible to explore the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, but his support ship activates its echosounder wherever he goes.
Mr. Vescovo told: “We have a map the gap’ technique.”
Because we are not a business, we are not required to use the most fuel-efficient routes. When we embark on an expedition, we ask Seabed 2030, “What are your priority areas? “, and we deviate somewhat to cover these places.
The former US Navy reservist provided approximately 3 million square kilometers.
To get close to acquiring a complete image of the ocean floor’s morphology on Earth, a significant shift in method and capabilities will be required. Many sections of the world are so remote that few ships will visit them, let alone collect depth data.
To map these areas, autonomous or semi-autonomous technology will need to be directly commanded.
One line of data at the top of this page’s map provides a preview of how this will function. Last year, it was collected by the Saildrone Surveyor on a voyage between San Francisco and Honolulu.
During this 28-day cruise, the robot vessel mapped 22,000 square kilometers of the ocean floor.
Saildrone Surveyor has a length of 22 meters. However, truly massive autonomous warships are imminent.
Ocean Infinity, a marine robotics business, is currently constructing a fleet of 78-meter-long ships in Vietnam. Shortly, regulations will likely necessitate that they operate with a minimal crew, but the ultimate goal is to have them roam the ocean without anyone on board. Their work would be supervised by satellite-connected control centers in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the third location in Asia.
Such spacecraft might be dispatched on lengthy missions to survey inaccessible regions at a fraction of the expense of a typical crewed vessel.
In a side meeting during this week’s United Nations Ocean Conference, progress towards a complete mapping of the seafloor was discussed. Dr. Lucy Woodall cautioned that the 2030 project would fail if it did not involve all data-interested communities, even though participants acknowledged that new technologies were vital to achieving the objective.
She provided examples of firms who mapped the seafloor in coastal regions without providing any information to the locals whose livelihoods depended on those waters.
“I would argue to those of you in the room who believe technology must be the way – I would argue that people are the way because unless people are asking the questions unless we have a dialogue with all the voices in the room, then we’re not going to ask, and therefore we can’t answer, the right questions,” the chief scientist with the UK-based oceans NGO Nekton told the meeting.
