By Courtney Mattison
Sylvia Earle often says, “We know more about space than we do about our ocean.” That surprising fact may soon change thanks to a new map produced using satellite data of variations in Earth’s gravitational field to reveal features of the seafloor that were previously undiscovered. By tapping into data streams from the Jason-1 and CryoSat-2 satellites, researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and their colleagues have made a breakthrough in seafloor mapping that “is like the difference between ordinary and high-definition television.”[i]

The data collected for the new seafloor map will inform the upcoming version of the global ocean seafloor in Google Earth and Maps and fill in large voids between shipboard depth profiles that have provided lower resolution seafloor mapping data in the past.…