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CMG Multibeam Map Guides Sustainable Seas Exploration in Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary
Every summer, eight nights after the full moon in August, corals begin
to spawn in the Gulf of Mexico's Flower Garden Banks National Marine
Sanctuary, an area of coral reefs about 100 miles south of Galveston,
Texas. This summer, CMG's Jim Gardner was there, using his 1997 multibeam
map of the sanctuary to show marine biologists the locations of the
spawning corals as they observed them. While an ROV (remotely operated
vehicle) equipped with a video camera cruised over the seafloor, Jim
conducted a virtual fly-through of his multibeam bathymetry, tracking
the ROV's location on the bathymetry in real time. For the first time,
it was possible for scientists to pinpoint the location of seafloor
features at the very moment they were observing and videotaping them.
This work was part of the Sustainable Seas Expedition, a five-year
project conducted by the National Geographic Society in cooperation
with NOAA and other research organizations to explore and study the
United States' National Marine Sanctuaries. A particular goal of the
expedition to Flower Garden Banks was to observe the annual coral
spawning in deep water, something that had never been done before.
Using the ROV (the seas were too rough for the DeepWorker submersible
that would otherwise have been used) and Jim Gardner's multibeam
bathymetry data, the expedition team documented coral spawning for
the first time around the bottom of the reef, at depths of 39 to 42 m.
When the Sustainable Seas Expedition explores Hawaii's Humpback Whale
National Marine Sanctuary next January, they will once again use Jim's
multibeam bathymetry data-this set collected in 1998. Jim and his
specialized computer equipment won't be onboard this time; he has
trained a NOAA scientist to use the data on Sustainable Seas computers.
Although the expedition team will not be able to conduct fly-throughs of
the data, they will be able to track the DeepWorker submersible and ROV
in real time.
To learn more about the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, or to see more CMG multibeam maps
from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, check out the Related Web Sites at the end of this story.
And watch for the National Geographic
Society's television series, "Sea Stories," for which videographers from
the Society were collecting footage during the Flower Garden Banks expedition.
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| Flower Garden Banks, generated from data collected by Jim Gardner
in 1997. Yellow dots show locations of dives planned for last September's
Sustainable
Seas Expedition. The actual dive sites were somewhat different because of
weather and logistics. |
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October 1999
in this issue:
cover story:
Busy Hurricane Season
Flower Garden Banks Nat'l Marine Sanctuary
Shark Festival
Earthquake Research on TV
Geology of Coastal Ecosystems
Coastal Zone '99
Best Paper
Massachusetts Bay GIS
Tea & Crumpets Seminars
Journalism Center Partnership
NAS/NRC Review
Woods Hole Arrivals & Departures
Woods Hole Visitors
October Publications List
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U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
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