Images

Swath bathymetry and derivative products such as slope, hillshaded relief, and rugosity maps provide information not only on water depth, but also the roughness and smoothness of the sea floor, which correlates with sea floor texture and depositional environment.

Sediment texture and distribution data were mapped qualitatively in Esri ArcGIS using a hierarchical methodology. Backscatter data were the first input, followed by bathymetry, surficial geologic and shallow stratigraphic interpretations, and photograph and sample databases. DEM, digital elevation model.

USGS Research Oceanographer Li Erikson collects coastal data along the Pacific coast during her Mendenhall Fellowship. Her research is focused on coastal storm modeling, storm-induced coastal flooding, erosion, and cliff failures over large geographic scales.

USGS scientists Patrick Barnard (left) and Jeff Hansen navigate personal watercraft equipped with GPS and echo sounders through the waters of San Francisco Bay. They are collecting bathymetric, or depth, information in order to create maps of the bottom of the Bay.

USGS Ocean Engineer Gerry Hatcher walks along South Jetty Beach, south of Ventura Harbor in southern California, to record beach elevations using a handheld computer and mobile GPS equipment.

This photograph of the seafloor off the California coast also shows jellyfish in the water column. This photograph was collected as part of the California Seafloor and Coastal Mapping Program.

A kelp greenling fish swimming above a seafloor of mixed gravel, cobble and rock outcrop with scattered shell. Fish is approx. 20 cm (8 inches) long. Image acquired 1 km (0.62 miles) offshore Half Moon Bay, California at a depth of 14 meters (46 ft). Also in the image are encrusting sponges, red algae (seaweed), and orange cup corals.

Boulders and biota off San Gregorio, California, in water approximately 30 meters (100 feet) deep. Organisms include bat stars, small sea anemones, strawberry anemone, cup corals, and frilly sea cucumbers.

Photograph of a starfish on the sea floor, offshore of Duxbury to Hull, Massachusetts

Eroding bluffs along Alaska’s Arctic coast. Note light permafrost in bluff face, below top few feet of soil and vegetation.

This nearly century-old whaling boat rests along the Beaufort Sea coast near Lonely, Alaska in July, 2007. The boat was washed away to sea just a few months later.

Beach front houses on Fire Island, NY

Contour plots of SSC for the spatial surveys during trade-wind conditions on the reef flat. (a) SSC from the low tide survey. The highest SSC (60e70 mg/l) were located in a nearshore band, and east of the fish ponds and Kaunakakai wharf. (b) SSC from the high tide surveys.

A NOAA image of the bathymetry north of Puerto Rico. Two ancient submarine landslides are visible as head scarps (labeled Loiza and Arecibo Amphitheaters). Seafloor fissures are indicated by black arrows, and dashed lines outline debris flows from past failures. Map annotated by Uri ten Brink, USGS

Didemnum vexillum

Shaded relief image of Red Brook, Massachusetts Harbor

Shaded relief image of Quicks Hole, Massachusetts

A multibeam bathymetric survey that produced unprecedented high resolution images of the mouth of San Francisco Bay was conducted in 2004 and 2005.

Jeff Hansen on an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, in 2006. The ATV is equipped with instrumentation which records beach topography.

Digital still photograph from Massachusetts Bay near Cohasset, MA, showing seastars (Asterias sp.), blood stars (Henricia sanguinolenta), blood drop tunicates (Dendrodoa carnea), mussels, and barnacles on cobbles and boulders covered with bubblegum algae and red filamentous algae. Water depth at this location is approximately 19.6 meters. 

Seafloor photos off MA coast