Images

Cover image for Cascadia Subduction Zone coring video, depicting researchers labeling a sediment core aboard a research vessel.

USGS Coastal Science

The USGS Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program is the only federal science program focused on the geology and processes of coastal and marine landscapes.

USGS Ocean Science

The USGS Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program is the only federal science program focused on the geology and processes of coastal and marine landscapes.

Dan Powers, aboard the Bold Horizon, prepares to deploy a piston core over the Cascadia Subduction Zone, off the northern California coast.

On the M/V Bold Horizon, Pete Dal Ferro and Jason Padgett deploy the piston core at sunset. 

On a whiteboard on the R/V Bold Horizon, researchers taped a vertical map showing the length of the Cascadia Subduction Zone in bathymetric detail. Many data gaps were filled by the cores collected during the research expedition.

The M/V Bold Horizon, operated by Eclipse Group, Inc., was contracted by the USGS to support the collection of piston cores and geophysical survey data along the Cascadia margin.  

Research command center on the vessel with live feed of the stern and the ship’s position projected on a bathymetric map.

Jason Padgett and Pete Dal Ferro deploy a piston core from the aft deck of the M/V Bold Horizon in rough seas.

Pete Dal Ferro and Chief Scientist Jenna Hill deploy a chirp sub-bottom profiler from the starboard deck of the M/V Bold Horizon.

George Snyder aboard the R/V Bold Horizon sits at the research command center, with monitors displaying the ship's aft deck and a bathymetric map of the seafloor

Sunset with the jumbo piston core on its track system on the aft deck of the M/V Bold Horizon.

A virtual “flight” over seafloor features in Southern California as if the water has been drained away. The flight travels around the features Footprint and Piggy Bank, just south of the northern Channel Islands in southern California.

A building lifted from its foundation by floodwater from Extratropical Typhoon Merbok is trapped under a bridge in Nome, Alaska.

Two coastal observing video cameras are installed atop a utility pole near the northernmost point of land in the United States, at Nuvuk (Point Barrow), Alaska. The cameras point northwest toward the Arctic Ocean and the boundary between the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

As part of the Expanding Pacific Research and Exploration of Submerged Systems (EXPRESS) 2022 expedition, a researcher aboard NOAA's R/V Bell M. Shimada prepares to deploy a conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) sensor array.

As part of the Expanding Pacific Research and Exploration of Submerged Systems (EXPRESS) 2022 expedition, researchers aboard NOAA's R/V Bell M. Shimada prepare to deploy an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).

USGS Research Geologist Curt Storlazzi from the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center was presented with the USCRTF Scientific Achievement Award by Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary Carmen G. Cantor.

Fault Map of the Salton Sea Area, from the publication "Seismostratigraphic analysis of Lake Cahuilla sedimentation cycles and fault displacement history beneath the Salton Sea, California, USA"

An animated GIF of a coral reef in American Samoa, showing colorful reef fish darting in and out of the coral

In active hydrothermal systems, hot hydrothermal fluid vents to cold seawater and supports communities of organisms that turn hydrothermal chemicals into energy. Here, tubeworms colonize an active hydrothermal vent at Escanaba Trough.