The following zipped data products are available for download.
Multibeam Bathymetry and Derived Surfaces
Multibeam data were collected with a hull-mounted Simrad EM 1002 multibeam SoNAR aboard the NOAA ship Nancy Foster, and from a Kongsberg EM 122 aboard the NOAA Ship Ron Brown. It was processed by a NOAA contractor using CARIS HIPS/SIPS v.7.0 software. Note: Verified tides were not applied to the data, leaving the depth values referenced to the ellipsoid. Slope (in degrees) and rugosity are derived from the gridded bathymetry surface, using ESRI’s Spatial Analyst extension and NOAA’s Benthic Habitat Modeler Toolbar, respectively. For more information about these derived surfaces, please see each dataset’s metadata (included in the zipped file). All products are in UTM zone 17N, datum NAD83, and are merged representations all deep coral priority areas on a given cruise.
This deepwater coral survey was produced by processing bathymetric data acquired from the 2010 Deep Coral Mission by NOAA Ship Ron Brown south of the Florida Keys. These broad banks of carbonate reefs are composed of deep water corals that grow with almost no light. Deep water corals are filter feeders that capture plankton and nutrients that pass through cold bottom water currents. This and other 10 meter datasets are available for download from the NOAA NOS CCMA Biogeography Team.
NOTE: The 3m surfaces for the 2010 Lost Coast Explorer are high resolution data sets that cover very large areas of the seafloor. These 3m surfaces may take a longer time to download and display in GIS than the 10m surfaces because of the large transfer sizes of the data. Please be aware of your computer's hard disk space and RAM capacity in order to optimize download speed and processing of the dataset.
| TIFF Images (Georeferenced): |
| Deep Sea Coral Mission |
Resolution (in meters) |
| |
Bathymetry |
Slope |
Rugosity |
| Ewing 1997 |
30 |
30 |
30 |
| Whiting 2000 |
50 |
50 |
50 |
| Whiting 2001 |
50 |
50 |
50 |
| Pathfinder 2003 |
30 |
30 |
30 |
| Little Hales 2003 |
30 |
30 |
30 |
| Nancy Foster 2006 |
30 |
30 |
30 |
| Thomas Jefferson 2007 |
30 |
30 |
30 |
| Nancy Foster June 2007 (Gray's Reef Cruise) |
10 |
10 |
10 |
| Nancy Foster September 2009 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
| Ron Brown November 2010 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
| Lost Coast Explorer 2010 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
Multibeam Backscatter
Backscatter data were collected using a Simrad EM 1002 and Kongsburg Em 122 multibeam echosounder. The data were corrected for geometric and radiometric distortions using Geocoder.
In particular, the following corrections were applied when artifacts were evident: AVG Flat, TX Power and RX Gain, Area Correction, Spherical Spreading, Tx and Rx Beam Patterns, Navigation attitude, Transducer Attitude and Slant-Range Distortion. The final mosaics were exported as GeoTIFFs in relative 8-bit (0 – 255) values for use in a GIS.
Acoustic backscatter mosaics are ostensibly an important piece of information when characterizing surficial seafloor features and delineating benthic habitats.
Backscatter imagery is produced by deriving the acoustic intensity from the multibeam data. Low intensity areas are dark from fine sediments like mud. High intensity areas are from coarse bottom types such as coral reefs.
| TIFF Images (Georeferenced): |
| Deep Sea Coral Mission |
Resolution (in meters) |
| Pathfinder 2003 |
30 |
| Nancy Foster 2006 |
50 |
| Thomas Jefferson 2007 |
50 |
| Nancy Foster June 2007 (Gray's Reef Cruise) |
5 |
| Nancy Foster September 2009 |
10 |
| Ron Brown November 2010 |
10 |
| Lost Coast Explorer 2010 |
3 |
Underwater Photography & Video Exploration
A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and was employed on several cruises to acquire video and high resolution still photos of the seafloor. The locations of these videos and photos are available for download (below) as point and polyline ESRI shapefiles in NAD83 UTM 17N.
| Shapefiles |
| Deep Sea Coral Mission |
Shapefile Type |
File name |
| Seward Johnson August 2009 |
ROV (Polyline) |
Coming Soon |