Recent efforts are pushing the boundaries of ocean mapping in Alaska’s waters with the help of automated vessels and collaborative mapping efforts. (via AlaskaBeacon)
Around 70% of Alaska’s waters are unmapped — a percentage that’s much too high for Westington and the rest of Seascape Alaska. Because she said that mapping the oceans doesn’t just provide information on the landscape that might lay beneath the depths. It also helps illuminate the path that ships might take, some of which bring in many of the goods and services that are essential for Alaskans’ survival.
This year, one of Saildrone’s unmanned surface vehicles completed a mapping mission in the Aleutian Islands, with funding support from NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The vessel mapped over 6,100 square miles, or 16,000 square kilometers, of previously unmapped seafloor surrounding the Aleutian Islands over a period of 52 days. The mission also mapped the seafloor off of California.
The Okeanos Explorer is a NOAA research vessel that is currently traveling through Alaska to collect data on ocean mapping. The ship’s crew is using data that the Saildrone Surveyor collected to help narrow in on certain areas of interest they’d like to focus on. The Explorer is also contributing to Seascape Alaska’s mission of mapping more of the sea floor.
A key point of interest for the Okeanos Explorer, he said, was seismic activity. Specifically the site of the 1964 earthquake, which had resounding impacts on communities across coastal Alaska. From May through September of this year, the Okeanos Explorer will be moving through Alaska stopping in Dutch Harbor and Seward among many other locations to gather mapping data for underexplored deep waters.
“The oceans are way bigger than anybody really knows,” he said. “I still have a hard time conceptualizing how big the oceans are.”
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