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Scientists at James Cook University in South Pacific, 50 miles off Cape York Peninsula east of Australia, were mapping underwater habitats beyond the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef when they reached a towering coral reef towering 1,640 feet above the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. Instead of empire building. The bottom of the shark fin-shaped wedge is nearly a mile long, and the tip is only 130 feet below sea level. Subsequent underwater surveys by a remotely operated vehicle revealed that the tower was full of fish and showed no sign of the coral bleaching that plagues the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Maceij Frolow
Huge coral towers, huge reefs and other formations attract explorers
Mark Fischetti He is a senior editor Scientific American. It covers all aspects of sustainability. Follow him on Twitter. @markfischetti Credit: Nick Higgins
Oceanographers like to say that we know more about the Moon’s surface than Earth’s seafloor. it’s true. In the year In 2017, only 6 percent of the global sea surface was mapped, mostly by sonar-equipped ships traveling straight back and forth across the local seabed.
But since then, countries have been eager to carve out seabeds in their own “exclusive economic zones” that extend 200 nautical miles from their shores, in part to search for vital minerals they can scrape up using large mining machines. Another push is Seabed 2030 – a map of the Earth’s total seabed by 2030 by the Nippon Foundation and the non-profit Global Bathymetric Ocean Chart.
The aim is to collect and stitch together maps produced by governments, industries and research institutions everywhere. Public disclosure of previously private bathing data is helping to expand the proposed areas. And unmanned, remotely operated vehicles equipped with sonar that can zoom underwater for days are accelerating the pace of mapping. By June 2022, a staggering 21 percent of the world’s sea floor had been mapped. The more expert you map, the more surprises you’ll find – such as the three unexpected unusual shapes described here.
This article was originally published in Scientific America 327, 2, 40-47 (August 2022) under the title “Every Inch of the Sea Floor.”
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0822-40
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