Earth's Final Frontier: The Global Race To Map the Entire Ocean Floor (theguardian.com) 29
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: An ambitious project to chart the seabed by 2030 could help countries prepare for tsunamis, protect marine habitats and monitor deep-sea mining. But the challenge is unprecedented. The race officially kicked off in 2017 at the United Nations Ocean Conference in New York City. When it began, around 6% of the ocean was mapped in accurate detail. On June 21, the global initiative -- known formally as the Nippon Foundation-Gebco Seabed 2030 Project -- released its latest edition: it has now mapped one-fifth of the seafloor.
Few countries need accurate maps of the seabed more than Japan, an island nation whose future is uniquely intertwined with the ocean's, and it is the Nippon Foundation , a Japanese non-profit organization run on the gambling proceeds of motorboat racing, that is backing Seabed 2030 with $2m every year. [...] But the mapping is a truly global collaboration, public and free to use, divided among four regional centers. The Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany took the Southern Ocean; Stockholm University and the University of New Hampshire cover the North Pacific and Arctic; New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research are responsible for the South and West Pacific Ocean. That leaves the largest swath, the entire Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University -- Ferrini's team. The finished map itself is created by a fifth centre, based in the UK: the British Oceanographic Data Centre in Southampton. It collects the analyzed data from the four centers and compiles it in the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (Gebco). The data is in the public domain, free to use, adapt and commercially exploit.
Few countries need accurate maps of the seabed more than Japan, an island nation whose future is uniquely intertwined with the ocean's, and it is the Nippon Foundation , a Japanese non-profit organization run on the gambling proceeds of motorboat racing, that is backing Seabed 2030 with $2m every year. [...] But the mapping is a truly global collaboration, public and free to use, divided among four regional centers. The Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany took the Southern Ocean; Stockholm University and the University of New Hampshire cover the North Pacific and Arctic; New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research are responsible for the South and West Pacific Ocean. That leaves the largest swath, the entire Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University -- Ferrini's team. The finished map itself is created by a fifth centre, based in the UK: the British Oceanographic Data Centre in Southampton. It collects the analyzed data from the four centers and compiles it in the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (Gebco). The data is in the public domain, free to use, adapt and commercially exploit.
Final? (Score:3)
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Go down into the core that is! Who knows what precious and aliens are hiding there ;-)
This guy [galleryoftheabsurd.com] for sure. Have you tried looking in a mirror lately? I did and I was amazed at how long my antennas have become lately I even seem to be growing gills for some strange reason or other!
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Just mention oil and that place will be taken over. ;)
No money in it (Score:2)
You'll notice how all the Big Data players and their gigabucks are conspicuously absent from this project. It's all non-profit and funding by barrel-bottom scraping. Nobody to track and no personal information to mine down at the bottom of the ocean I guess...
Re:No money in it (Score:5, Interesting)
Oil companies are involved. For everyone else they are doing what they always do and waiting for someone else to do the basic research so they can step in later and make all the profit. The usual way that basic R&D happens.
oil and minerals (Score:2)
most of the oil fields are mapped already it just depends on the price of oil to actually retrieve it (which does not look good at the moment)
what would be helpful is the sonar from shipping etc
the resolution is places is 500m so not exactly state of the art but actually having the globe mapped at some level would be useful to future generations studying things like shifting patterns etc which are impossible without data at some point...
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https://www.theonion.com/exxon... [theonion.com]
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Not just oil extraction, but seafloor nodule mining:
Because the nodules grow so slowly, mining them will effectively remove them from the sea floor permanently, say scientists. The nodules are an irreplaceable habitat for many of the creatures that live in the CCZ. “For most of the animals in the direct vicinity, mining will be lethal.Jul 24, 2019 [nature.com]
It seems that the companies involved do not want to be tracked due to the long terms effects of their profiteering off of shared resources
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Tell me how you'd make money with a slightly-more-accurate map of the ocean floor, that changes like the weather with every tide, etc.
We already have imaging good enough for most purposes. Those interested have paid for imaging around areas of interest. And the reason that only tiny parts of the ocean have ever been explored is that nobody goes there, wants to go there, and there's not very much there to look at at all.
It's also incredibly expensive, dangerous, and fairly... well... useless. You'll get a
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Tell me how you'd make money with a slightly-more-accurate map of the ocean floor, that changes like the weather with every tide, etc.
Japan seems to think mapping the ocean floor will benefit them. Not make money mind you, but surely save money by being better prepared for tsunamis.
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An ambitious project to chart the seabed by 2030 could help countries prepare for tsunamis, protect marine habitats and monitor deep-sea mining.
You just know that in practice what'll be done with the data is show where to drill for oil, driftnet fish, and dump toxic waste.
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You'll notice how all the Big Data players and their gigabucks are conspicuously absent from this project.
Larry and Sergei don't want you to find their undersea lairs.
Finally! (Score:2)
We can use Google OceanView to prepare our scuba trips!
Re: Final frontier? (Score:1)
MH370 (Score:2)
Maybe this will be how Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 [wikipedia.org] will be found.
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? (Score:2)
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Just the floor? Why not the ceiling? (Score:4, Funny)
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You're still thinking 2-dimensionally. We need 3D voxels to map the ocean volume. ;)
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They already do.
Satellites such as ERS-1, -2 and Envisat scans the "ocean ceiling", measuring surface temperature and wave heights. These also detected the so called "monster waves" that roll along the "ocean ceiling" some time ago ...
https://www.esa.int/Applicatio... [esa.int]
Bad idea (Score:2)
First come explorers. Then come roads (meaning 'infrastructure'). Then comes exploitation.
Kaiju, Godzilla (Score:2)
Most Cool! (Score:2)
I do hope they'll mark all the sunken warships (and maybe treasure galleons too?) while they're at it.
I wonder if the various navies fo the world are going to kick in their undersea mapping data? Nah, probably not, selfish bastiges. Although, after that one US Navy attack sub ran headlong at full speed into an undetected underwater sea mount, I donno if we could trust their data or not.