What do you think of this fact?
Every kid knows that oceans cover most of the Earth. Fewer people know how little we know about their floor. Most of it still hasn’t been measured in detail.
A big blank spot
Of course, there are maps of the entire seafloor. But much of them is based on measurements from space, which only give a rough picture. Mountains, canyons and plains on the bottom look very blurry on them.
It only gets precise when ships scan the bottom with sound. They send sound waves down and measure how long the echo takes to come back. That’s exactly what the international Seabed 2030 project wants to achieve for the entire seafloor, by 2030.
The progress
According to Engadget, almost a quarter was done in 2022, 23.4 percent. In the year before that alone, about 3.8 million square miles were added.
Then, in June 2024, on World Hydrography Day, Seabed 2030 reported 26.1 percent, according to the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping. In other words: almost three quarters of the seafloor still isn’t known in high resolution.
Bonus fact: According to Engadget, the big jump came mainly from archives. Many measurements already existed, they were just held by governments and companies that are gradually opening them up for the project.
Why does it matter? Detailed maps help forecast tsunamis better, guide ships and undersea cables safely and protect habitats on the seafloor. They also show how currents flow across the bottom and influence the climate.
So there’s still plenty to do before 2030. Until then, we sometimes know more about the surface of other worlds than about the ground right under our ships.
Anyone standing on a beach looking out to sea is looking at one of the last great unknown landscapes on Earth.