Coastal Single-Beam Bathymetry Data: Midnight Pass and Milton Pass, Florida, June 2025

In June 2025, the U.S. Geological Survey St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center (USGS SPCMSC) participated in a multidisciplinary geoscientific field data collection within Midnight Pass and Milton Pass located along Florida’s west-central coastline, which opened as a result of hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024. Researchers with the Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (NEER) and the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (GEER) first conducted surveys of these inlets immediately following Hurricane Milton in 2024, and the data collected by the USGS SPCMSC in 2025 was to support the continued monitoring of the evolution of these inlets (Stark and others, 2025).

The USGS SPCMSC conducted single-beam bathymetry surveys at Midnight Pass and Milton Pass, Florida from June 25–26, 2025, under the USGS Field Activity Number (FAN) 2025-313-FA. Each survey area encompassed the nearshore environment, the inlet, and the back bay waterway resulting in 3.94 square kilometers (km2) of coverage for Midnight Pass, and 3.41 km2 for Milton Pass. The single-beam bathymetry was acquired using two 12-foot personal watercrafts (PWC), outfitted with high precision Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, motion reference units, and survey-grade single-beam echosounders (SBES). This data release provides point data (x, y, z) in two datums: 1) World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) realization G2296, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zone 17 North (N) for the horizontal and WGS84 (G2296) ellipsoidal height in meters for the vertical; and 2) North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) realization of 2011 for the horizontal, and North American Vertical Datum 1988 (NAVD88) orthometric height in meters with respect to GEOID18 for the vertical. Additional files include single beam trackline shapefiles (.shp). For further information regarding data collection and/or processing, please see the metadata associated with this data release.

Stark, N., Gardner, M., Grilliot, M., Lyda, A., Dedinsky, K., Mueller, J., Pezoldt, C., Hubler, J., Castro-Bolinaga, C., Schueller, A., Zhan, W., Haefeli, M., Burghardt, S., Wondolowski, M., Holberg, S., Hassan, M., Parker, J., Laurel-Castillo, J., Eggensberger, L., Nichols, E., Herndon, H., Wang, P., Olabarrieta Lizaso, M., Raubenheimer, B., Hashash, Y., Adusei, S., and Jafari N., 2025, NEER/GEER: Hurricanes Helene & Milton Dataset: NSF NHERI DesignSafe, https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-m8h3-5802.