Devey, Colin W. , Wölfl, Anne-Cathrin , Augustin, Nico , Besaw, Mary, Damaske, Daniel, Evora, Dario, Gray, Alexandra, Hübscher, Christian, Le Saout, Morgane , Lux, Thorsten, Schade, Martin, Sobolewski, Linda and Villinger, Heinrich (2020) Bathymetric Mapping Of The Seafloor - A German Contribution To Completing The Map By 2030, Cruise No. MSM88/1 + MSM88/2, November 28, 2019 - January 14, 2020, Mindelo (Cabo Verde) - Mindelo (Cabo Verde) - Bridgetown (Barbados). . MARIA S. MERIAN-Berichte, MSM88/1 + MSM88/2 . Gutachterpanel Forschungsschiffe, Bonn, 24 pp. DOI 10.2312/cr_msm88.

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Abstract

Despite over 100 years of acoustic seabed mapping, only around 15% of the seafloor has ever been directly mapped and little of the mapping performed has been systematic or over larger areas. The result is that our knowledge of seafloor structure is rudimentary and our understanding of the processes which form them has, in principle, advanced little since the advent of plate tectonics. Societally, the seafloor plays a vital role in humanity’s "life support system", for example providing habitat for marine organisms, stimulating mixing of ocean water as part of the overturning circulation system and increasingly being the site of industrial installations. It is scientifically and societally imperative that we bring the level of knowledge of the surface of our planet up to that of bodies like Moon and Mars that are mapped with a resolution better than 100 m per pixel. It is also essential that the data are made freely available to all to support research and conservation. The aim of this cruise was to map previously uncharted part of the tropical Atlantic using the ship’s multibeam system and to provide the data to global open databases as well as to acquire magnetic gradient data along the same tracks. Magnetic anomalies from so-called Oceanic Core Complexes challenged the conventional view that marine magnetic anomalies arose in the upper, extrusive layer of the oceanic crust, because the crust has been stripped away at these complexes. We therefore collected magnetic data simultaneously to the multibeam data in order to constrain the interpretation of the observed seabed morphology.

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