Abstract
How deep is the ocean? To find the answer to this question is not as simple as you may think. Ocean mapping technology has developed over time, and there have been many advances like the invention of sonar. But it is a fact that Mars is better mapped than of our own ocean floor. The search for the missing Malaysian Airline Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean illustrates how poorly our oceans are mapped. In this chapter we will learn how to take a piston core sample of the ocean floor, and we will meet Maurice (Doc) Ewing and learn how he invented seismic profiling so that we could “see” the layers of rocks and sediment beneath the ocean floor. But all of our sonars and seismic systems make a lot of noise. How has this impacted on marine mammals and other ocean creatures?
“This new (sonar) method has in a few years completely altered our concept of the topography of the ocean bottom. Basins and ridges, troughs and peaks have been discovered, and in many areas a bottom topography has been found as rugged as the topography of any mountain landscape. ”
Harald Sverdrup, Martin Johnson, and Richard Fleming
The Oceans, 1942
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Notes
- 1.
“Dead reckoning” is a term sailors use to describe the process of using the ship’s speed and course to estimate its present position by extrapolating backward to the ship’s last known position. This works fine if there is no current or wind shear blowing you off course (except there is nearly always some current and wind shear!).
- 2.
- 3.
Becker et al. (2009).
- 4.
Picard et al. (2018).
- 5.
Smith and Sandwell (1997).
- 6.
Schlee (1978).
- 7.
Harris et al. (2016).
- 8.
Williams et al. (2015).
- 9.
Kvenvolden and Cooper (2003).
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Harris, P.T. (2020). How Deep Is the Ocean?. In: Mysterious Ocean. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15632-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15632-9_4
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