Ocean Floor Mapping

Cmor mapping s game changing high resolution bathymetric imagery for simrad lowrance raymarine and furuno chartplotters and mercury vesselview displays brings the ocean floor into an entirely new level of focus for anglers and divers.
Ocean floor mapping. Published today this is the most detailed map of the ocean floor ever produced using satellite imagery to show ridges and trenches of the earth s underwater surface even for areas which have. Bathymetry data can be requested from the geophysical survey and mapping group. By conducting a multibeam sonar survey similar to a medical ultrasound scientists are able to image the sea bottom. Plate tectonics and the ocean floor.
The ocean s floor is as complex as it is deep. Topographic maps of the sea floor produced at a 1 100 000 scale that contain loran c rates bottom sediment types and known bottom obstructions. Huge trenches walls flatlands and seamounts fill the seascape and have a direct impact on the water bodies above them. The geophysical survey and mapping team also works on developing new techniques to process and interpret sonar data.
Visit our showcase page on mapping the ocean floor to learn more about seamounts canyons ridges shipwrecks and ice scouring. The nippon foundation gebco seabed 2030 project has mapped one fifth of the world s ocean floor. Bathymetry the shape of the ocean floor is largely a result of a process called plate tectonics the outer rocky layer of the earth includes about a dozen large sections called tectonic plates that are arranged like a spherical jig saw puzzle floating on top of the earth s hot flowing mantle. The publication of heezen and tharp s physiographic map of the north atlantic in 1957 was the first map of the sea floor that enabled the general public to begin to visualize what the ocean floor really looked like.
These early maps based on hundreds of thousands of hand picked depths provided the context for the plate tectonics revolution. The problem with that approach is that our oceans are vast and ships are small meaning only a tiny percentage of the ocean floor between 5 15 percent nasa estimates was mapped.