Healy Breaking Ice and Mapping Ground

This photograph is of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy in the Arctic Ocean, where USGS scientists are helping map the Arctic seafloor and gather data to help define the outer limits of the continental shelf. The U.S. and Canada are working together in this mission, and the U.S. effort is through the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf Task Force, of which the USGS is a participant. Each country may exercise sovereign rights over their extended continental shelf's natural resources of the seabed and subsoil. The outer limits can be defined according to criteria set forth in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.