Seafloor Mapping

A point cloud of the seamount mapped during the Seascape Alaska 1: Aleutians Deepwater Mapping expedition, generated from acoustic data collected via multibeam echosounder. The hot colors (red, orange, and yellow) represent the newly mapped peak of the seamount at a depth of 895 meters (2,936 feet), while the cold colors (purple, teal, blue) represent the base of the seamount at a depth of around 4,000 meters (13,123 feet).

In addition to helping us find features on the seafloor, multibeam sonar allows us to detect things like methane bubbles in the water column. This bathymetric data, collected using the sonars on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, revealed methane bubble plumes at Norfolk Seeps of the Atlantic Coast rising over 900 meters (2,950 feet) above the seafloor in some surveys.

While conducting mapping operations off the coast of California in 2023, Saildrone Surveyor mapped this previously undiscovered seamount that rises nearly 3,500 meters (2.17 miles) off the seafloor. Shaped much like the butte features found in the deserts of the Southwest, researchers do not know why or how the seamount gained its cylindrical shape but do think it was most likely a volcanic formation.