A global map of the ocean floor could buoy the economy
A global map of the ocean floor could buoy the economy
Imagine, for a moment, what it would mean for this economy if we didn’t have maps: Transportation, trade, resource extraction, disaster mitigation — so much of what we do would be made more complicated, to say the least.
Well, it turns out, for most of the planet’s surface — the ocean floor, that is — we don’t have very good maps.
Researchers announced Friday that they’ve completed a map for just over one-quarter of the global seabed. It’s part of a long-term effort, funded by governments and nonprofits around the world, to map the entire seafloor for the first time. And it’s got major global economic implications.
How exactly does one map the bottom of the ocean?
Humans have been sailing the seas for millennia without a great sense of what was below them. We didn’t have the means to find out.
“That’s because the techniques for most of that time were very, very primitive,” said Larry Mayer, a professor and director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire.
By “primitive,” he means a hunk of lead on the end of rope. “That’s no way to, to measure three-quarters of our planet,” he said.
Sonar technology developed since World War II has made seabed mapping way more efficient, Mayer said. To do it, you need special ships to crisscross the ocean and bounce sound waves off the seafloor, which can get expensive.
“The cost estimate was somewhere between $3 billion and $5 billion,” he said.
But if you wind up with a map of most of the globe? “The cost estimate is really a bargain,” said Dawn Wright, an oceanographer and chief scientist at the mapping company Esri. She said the project will more than pay for itself.
“There are so many benefits. We’re having this conversation because of the seafloor,” she said.
Specifically, because of the data cables down there, which span a distance approaching 1 million miles.
And it’s not just the telecom industry that could use a better map. There’s also tsunami prediction, climate modeling, fishing, mineral extraction — and that little industry that moves a lot of the stuff we buy.
“Accurate maps of the seabed help to keep thousands of ships safely moving goods and services around the world,” Wright said.
A study commissioned by the Australian government found that seafloor mapping boosted its economy to the tune of $9 billion. The U.S. wants to learn more about its own seabed because, simply put, there’s a lot of it, said Robert Ballard, president of the Ocean Exploration Trust.
“Fifty-two percent of the United States is under the ocean. And I wanna know what we own,” he said. It’s basic inventory, really.
The researchers hope to have their map of the entire seabed done by the end of the decade.
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