Scuba Sea Floor Mapping

This brine was an indirect evidence of water coming out of the ocean floor.

Scuba sea floor mapping.

Aided by reports from mexican abalone divers scientists using scuba equipment located shallow water hot springs along the coast of baja california in the late 1960s. 2 and high resolution seismic reflection profiling direct sampling and visual observations to characterize the sea floor. Development of the seafloor mapping auv and software for processing the sonar data has been a major focus of the seafloor mapping lab. If that leak is big enough it provides an energy source for microbes who can capture it use it and pass it on to other organisms.

Reef structures are three dimensional and thus offer more attachment surfaces for marine life growth than the two dimensional sea floor. Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet. Learn about the noaa office of ocean exploration and research the nation s. An unprecedented effort to map the seafloor bordering california s coastline has produced some of the most detailed beautiful and useful maps of an underwater landscape ever made.

The sea floor then drops off steeply along the continental slope the true edge of the continent. New high resolution maps of the seafloor are expected to. Methane seeps are areas where methane leaks from vast reservoirs deep in the ocean mud. 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.

Drive new science such as sediment transport from shelf to deep sea enable deep sea resource management such as habitat surveys. Thus on an equal area basis reef habitats have 825 times more biomass than the sandy bottom. Running through all the world s oceans is a continuous mountain range called the mid ocean ridge submarine ridge in figure 14 23. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level.

The surveys provide a new highly detailed view of the sea floor. A similar area square meter of sandy sea floor naturally has only about 2 5 ounces of marine life. Mapping the sea floor. In the 1960 s metal rich hot brines were discovered using sonar in the bottom of the red sea.

The smooth flat regions that make up 40 of the ocean floor are the abyssal plain. At smithsonian ocean we have lesson plans activities and resources to help you engage your students in the wonders of our oceans.