Seabed 2030 Charts 28.7% of Ocean Floor, Adding 5 Million Sq Km in a Year
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 27
Seabed 2030 Charts 28.7% of Ocean Floor, Adding 5 Million Sq Km in a Year
3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 27
Summary
About 104 million square kilometres of seabed now meet modern mapping standards, the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project reported at the International Hydrographic Organization assembly, lifting coverage to 28.7%.
Nearly 258 million square kilometres remain unmapped to that standard because deep-ocean surveying still depends on shipborne multibeam sonar; seawater blocks radar and laser methods that mapped Mars and the Moon globally.
The newly released GEBCO_2026 grid has no gaps, but Seabed 2030 says many areas still rely on predicted bathymetry inferred from satellite gravity rather than direct soundings.
SWOT satellite data improved those gravity-based estimates, resolving seafloor structure at about 8 kilometres and potentially doubling known seamounts, but that remains far coarser than ship surveys.
At the current pace of roughly 5 million square kilometres a year, the project will need faster gains from commercial-vessel data, uncrewed craft and released industry surveys to close the gap.