Scientists want to map the planet’s vast, unknown ocean floor.
Using sonar aboard ships, unmanned submarines and other vessels, ambitious researchers hope to build over the next 14 years a Google Maps-style guide to mountains, valleys and volcanoes deep underwater, the Sunday Times of London reported.
The project — with 150 oceanographers already on board — aims to complete a worldwide seabed map by 2030. It’s being overseen by the UN-backed General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (Gebco), with help from Google.
“Sea mountains are very common,” Professor Julian Dowdeswell of Cambridge University in the UK and a researcher in this mapping project, told the Sunday Times. Researchers said this is more than just an academic exercise, as submarine captains could make great use of this potential information.
In 2005, a nuclear sub, the USS San Francisco, struck an underwater mountain not on any charts 525 feet under the Pacific.
The crash killed one crew member and injured 97.