New Ocean Floor Views

The new online data viewer compiles sea floor data from the near shore to the deep blue, including the latest high-resolution bathymetric (sea bottom) data collected by NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey primarily to support nautical charting.

NOAA’s ocean bottom data are critical to so many mission requirements, including coastal safety and resiliency, navigation, healthy oceans and more,  said Susan McLean, chief of NOAA’s Marine Geology and Geophysics Division in Boulder, Colorado.

McLean’s division is part of NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center, responsible for compiling, archiving and distributing Earth system data, including Earth observations from space, marine geology information and international natural hazard data and imagery. NGDC’s sea floor data have long been free and open to the public in original science formatting, but that often required the use of specialised software to convert the data into maps and other products.

The new interface makes exploration easy and intuitive, using a “colour-shaded relief” technique to depict bathymetric data and derived maps and models. For example, a user can zoom into Delgada Canyon, one of a series of deep canyons off the northern California coast between Fort Bragg and Eureka (image on this page). The sea floor descends steeply from shallow yellows into dark blues and purples.

NOAA’s latest sea floor data, Office of Coast Survey gridded bathymetry data, are archived and displayed in the new viewer through an open source file format known as BAG (Bathymetry Attributed Grid), developed by the Open Navigation Surface Working Group.  The viewer details can be accessed following the link below.