NOAA Launches Online Viewer That Lets Users Explore Oceans and Undersea Features

Posted on April 18, 2012

NOAA has made sea floor maps and other data on the world's coasts, continental shelves and deep ocean available for easy viewing online. Bathymetry (study of underwater depth) and digital elevation models from the National Geophysical Data Center can be viewed online here. Users can zoom in using the bar on the top left and explore undersea features and obtain detailed depictions of the sea floor and coasts, including deep canyons, ripples, landslides and likely fish habitat. User can also toggle the Basemap selector to change between different views, such as ocean, terrain, simple and imagery.

The image above shows a view of Delgada Canyon offshore Northern California, as portrayed in NOAA's new online viewer.

The new online data viewer compiles sea floor data from the near shore to the deep blue, including the latest high-resolution bathymetric data collected by NOAA's Office of Coast Survey.

Susan McLean, chief of NOAA's Marine Geology and Geophysics Division in Boulder, Colo, says, "NOAA's ocean bottom data are critical to so many mission requirements, including coastal safety and resiliency, navigation, healthy oceans and more. They are also just plain beautiful."

LCDR Dan Price, bathymetric program manager at NGDC, says, "For serious scientists, the new viewer allows an important preview capability that will help speed data access and analysis. But its real power is exposing a new audience to NOAA data. "I showed the new viewer to my neighbors and they were blown away by the detail and features revealed."

NOAA