Canada CHS update in the Marine GeoGarage

As our public viewer is not yet available
(currently under construction, upgrading to Google Maps API v3 as v2 is officially no more supported),
this info is primarily intended to our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers
in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API. 

CHS raster charts coverage

36 charts have been updated (June 26, 2014)

• 1350A SOREL - TRACY AU/TO RUISSEAU LAHAISE
• 1350B RUISSEAU LAHAISE À/TO SAINT-ANTOINE-SUR-RICHELIEU
• 1350C SAINT-ANTOINE-SUR-RICHELIEU À/TO ÎLE AUX CERFS
• 1350D ÎLE AUX CERFS À/TO OTTERBURN PARK
• 1439 CARLETON ISLAND TO/AU CHARITY SHOAL
• 1510A LAC DES DEUX MONTAGNES
• 1510B LAC DES DEUX MONTAGNES
• 2018 LOWER GAP TO/À ADOLPHUS REACH
• 2064 KINGSTON TO/À FALSE DUCKS ISLANDS
• 2110 LONG POINT BAY
• 2120 NIAGARA RIVER TO/À LONG POINT
• 3001 VANCOUVER ISLAND ÎLE DE VANCOUVER JUAN DE FUCA STRAIT TO/À QUEEN CHARLOT
• 3002 QUEEN CHARLOTTE SOUND TO / À DIXON ENTRANCE
• 3050A KOOTENAY RIVER MILE 0 TO MILE 8.7
• 3050B SHEET 2 KOOTENAY RIVER MILE 8.3 TO MILE 16.5
• 3050C KOOTENAY RIVER MILE 15.8 TO 24.9
• 3050D KOOTENAY RIVER MILE 24.2 TO 29
• 3050E SHEET 5 KOOTENAY LAKE KUSKONOOK TO BOSWELL
• 3050F KOOTENAY LAKE RHINOCEROS POINT TO RIONDEL
• 3050G KOOTENAY LAKE RIONDEL TO KASLO
• 3050H KOOTENAY LAKE KASLO TO LARDEAU
• 3050I WEST ARM KOOTENAY LAKE PROCTOR LIGHT TO HARROP NARROWS
• 3050J WEST ARM KOOTENAY LAKE HARROP NARROWS TO NINE MILE NARROWS
• 3050K WEST ARM KOOTENAY LAKE NINE MILE NARROWS TO FIVE MILE POINT
• 3050L WEST ARM KOOTENAY LAKE FIVE MILE POINT TO NELSON
• 3050M WEST ARM KOOTENAY LAKE NELSON TO TAGHUM
• 3050N KOOTENAY RIVER TAGHUM TO CORRA LINN DAM
• 3440 RACE ROCKS TO/À D'ARCY ISLAND
• 3441 HARO STRAIT BOUNDARY PASS AND/ET SATELLITE CHANNEL
• 3442 NORTH PENDER ISLAND TO/À THETIS ISLAND
• 3443 THETIS ISLAND TO/À NANAIMO
• 3456 HALIBUT BANK TO/À BALLENAS CHANNEL
• 3458 APPROACHES TO / APPROCHES À NANAIMO HARBOUR
• 3461 JUAN DE FUCA STRAIT EASTERN PORTION/PARTIE EST
• 3462 JUAN DE FUCA STRAIT TO/À STRAIT OF GEORGIA
• 3475 PLANS - STUART CHANNEL
• 3478 SANSUM NARROWS
• 3490 FRASER RIVER/FLEUVE FRASER - SAND HEADS TO/À DOUGLAS ISLANDS BC
• 3602 APPROACHES TO/APPROCHES À JUAN DE FUCA STRAIT
• 3676 ESPERANZA INLET
• 3800 DIXON ENTRANCE
• 4021 POINTE AMOUR À/TO CAPE WHITTLE ET/AND CAPE GEORGE
• 4118 ST. MARY'S BAY
• 4201 HALIFAX HARBOUR (BEDFORD BASIN)
• 4202 HALIFAX HARBOUR POINT PLEASANT TO/À BEDFORD BASIN
• 4278 GREAT BRAS D'OR AND / ET ST PATRICKS CHANNEL
• 4381 MAHONE BAY
• 4432 ARCHIPEL DE MINGAN
• 4471 BAIE AU SAUMON À/TO BAIE DES HOMARDS
• 4644 BAY D'ESPOIR AND/ET HERMITAGE BAY
• 4827 HARE BAY TO / À FORTUNE HEAD
• 4955 HAVRE-AUX-MAISONS
• 6100A LAC SAINT JEAN
• 6100B RIVIÈRE MISTASSINI
• 6100C RIVIÈRE PÉRIBONKA
• 6100D LA GRANDE DÉCHARGE ET LES APPROCHES/AND APPROACHES

So 691 charts (1668 including sub-charts) are available in the Canada CHS layer. (see coverage)

Note : don't forget to visit 'Notices to Mariners' published monthly and available from the Canadian Coast Guard both online or through a free hardcopy subscription service.
This essential publication provides the latest information on changes to the aids to navigation system, as well as updates from CHS regarding CHS charts and publications.
See also written Notices to Shipping and Navarea warnings : NOTSHIP

Unlocking the Ocean : smart ocean planning using crowdsourced data

Crowdsourcing data to provide efficiencies in hydrographic surveying (CARIS)

From SailorfortheSea, by Paul Cooper & John Hersey

The marine and coastal zones of the world host a growing number of overlapping and at times competing uses and activities.
The commercial, recreational, cultural, energy, scientific, conservation, security, and other interests of these users drive our ocean priorities.
These include the protection of life and property, securing renewable energy resources, developing and sustaining ocean productivity, supporting national security and of course ensuring its enjoyment by recreational boaters.

The increasing degree to which legislators are controlling both national and international waters is due to the growth of awareness in the importance of management of the ocean’s resources (image courtesy of NOAA).

Smart ocean planning helps guide these priorities and creates a program that organizes the demands placed on the ocean by industry and individuals.
Smart ocean planning is an adaptive, integrated, ecosystem-based planning process that uses sound science and good data.
It is developed for analyzing current and anticipated use of offshore, near shore and coastal space.
In practical terms, ocean planning provides a public process to better determine how the ocean and coasts are sustainably exploited and protected now and for future generations.

Smart ocean planning provides the evidence to support plans for development in the most suitable sites for a range or class of activities.
It provides the information that will reduce conflicts among different users, reduce environmental impacts, facilitate compatible uses, and preserve critical ecosystems.
Some examples of successful ocean planning include moving shipping lanes outside of Boston Harbor to prevent hitting whales and protecting the coral reefs of the Florida Keys.

Limits on ocean research capabilities

Given the size and extent of the ocean, the limited worldwide oceanographic fleet cannot adequately document navigation and environmental hazards, especially in support of smart ocean planning dynamics.
Over the past several years, the scientific community has begun supplementing the work of these ships with fixed sensors.
In the United States, the National Science Foundation Ocean Observing Initiative and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Integrated Ocean Observing System are establishing permanent surface and seafloor installations that allow for constant and persistent monitoring of ocean processes.
The drawback is that these fixed-location sensors are relatively expensive to operate, limiting how widely they can be dispersed.

Your afternoon on the water can support smart ocean planning

Every citizen in the United States can help with smart ocean planning by encouraging legislation that supports it.
However, recreational boaters and those that work in the marine industry have the opportunity to also contribute much needed data, often using the sensors already installed on their boats.

ARGUS™ is a patented, autonomous, crowdsource bathymetry (the study of underwater depth) system that provides continuous, automated acquisition and processing of depth data.
ARGUS™ interfaces with vessels’ existing GPS and depth-finding systems and automatically processes the information for both data aggregation and sharing across the web.
Originally demonstrated as part of a NOAA research grant, ARGUS™ has processed over 100 million depth soundings from an international fleet ranging from 18-foot bass boats to 1000-foot commercial cruise liners.
The wide spectrum of users provide representation for the maritime community in the ocean planning process, and provides valuable data in support of this process for areas that may not have been surveyed in decades.

The National Ocean Policy highlights the importance of stakeholder participation throughout ocean planning.

ARGUS data helps track the uses of different types of boats in Baltimore Harbor and provides indications as to the current state of shipping channels.

ARGUS™ in action

ARGUS™ is being used to great effect in one of the busiest waterways in the United States, the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). 

The Salty Southeast Cruisers’ Net is an online social media forum focused on the ICW, and is a treasure trove of useful reports and articles provided by and consumed by ICW cruisers.

The website informs others via chart displays, enhanced with access to information such as fuel prices, marina accommodations, and navigation hazards like misplaced buoys and shoaling.

These reports are also enhanced by the millions of water depth measurements made by cruisers during their routine ICW transits, autonomously delivered and processed through the ARGUS™ crowdsource bathymetry innovations of SURVICE Engineering and CARIS USA. 

What was previously a fleeting number on a chartplotter screen, that may or may not have been looked at and interpreted, is now useful knowledge thanks to this pioneering partnership.

 Mile Marker 365 of the ICW: Image credit SURVICE

How do you know that data is trustworthy?

We can all appreciate the value of repeated measurements.

If my boating neighbours and I consistently measure the same depth in a location, we become confident in that depth measurement.

The concept of “trusted partner” development strives to advance the crowdsource bathymetry process by certifying the incoming data and maximizing the accuracy and utility of the aggregated solutions. This is being done through the application of ever-improving hardware and scientific expertise in the field of hydrography, fueled by academic interests in big data and information visualization.  Continued development will soon make information gathered from crowdsource bathymetry better than the pre-1940s “soundings” that are the basis for the majority of modern charts.

The concept of trusted partners is the perfect complement to the limited availability of both ships and fixed ocean sensors, enlisting ships of opportunity from the maritime industry along with recreational boats, to collect a wide range of oceanographic and meteorological data.

This is a powerful and practical approach that inexpensively leverages an unlimited, distributed workforce that frequents, as well as relies on, the marine and coastal zones of interest as shown in Figure 3.

Vessel traffic is highest in the same coastal zones in which smart ocean planning is most needed.  Leveraging these vessels, of which there are millions available, insures that mariners are involved in an ocean planning process that is based on scientific measurements rather than uninformed policies.

More opportunities

Very localized weather and other environmental data from this worldwide ocean-going fleet can also be input to weather models or used for confirming the data supplied by satellite systems.

Better forecasting combined with real-time dissemination to the vessel bridge will provide safest routing as vessels negotiate ocean storms.

Additionally, real-time updates from the ship ahead can provide following vessels with advance warning of conditions.

Trusted partnerships are self-enabling opportunities for industry to not only collectively reap the benefit of each other’s measurements, but also to collectively influence longer-term smart ocean planning with trusted data.

Industry’s contributions are matched by scientists, researchers, and the public at large, to complete the partnership.

Making involvement in trusted partnerships a part of a company’s corporate social responsibility policy demonstrates a theme of contributing to society.

Such responsible companies are generally welcome neighbors and are looked upon favourably by local consumers and environmental advocates. 

The most effective ocean planning will come from a mature and growing marine spatial data infrastructure of traditional data sources complemented by trusted partners contributing to the greater purpose.

Such partnerships will speed progress toward better environmental management, and provide for unprecedented sharing of information and costs across the base of ocean users.

Links :

• Argus Survice : Autonomous Crowdsourced bathymetry (CSB) / paper
• Crowdsourced bathymetry : One solution for addressing nautical chart data deficiencies
• IHO : Crowd-sourced bathymetry  / The lack of hydrographic data
• IIcTechnologies : How The “Download Generation” will drive Electronic Charting in a new direction (2009)
• GEBCO : Where are the bathymetric hot-spots ?
• Power&MotorYacht : How to have the most accurate nautical charts (in these days of oversharing, boaters now have a way to get the best, most up-to-date charts by joining the “in” crowd)
• TeamSurv : Project where mariners help create better charts of coastal waters, by logging depth and position data whilst they are at sea (see BBC video)
• Olex :  Collected sea floor data
• Sea-Id : Crowd sourced bathymetry exchange platform (video)
• WebGIS :  Web-GIS based crowd sourcing aiming at producing inland lake charts (Denmark)

NOAA tests unmanned aircraft for wildlife surveys and environmental research in Hawaii

Drones are being tested to help carry our important scientific missions, including surveys of wildlife and marine debris in the National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of the Olympic Peninsula in July 2013

From NOAA

NOAA scientists are testing two types of unmanned aircraft this summer to survey a variety of rare and endangered species, monitor remote marine areas, locate marine debris for removal and study fragile ecological features in the vast Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Papahānaumokuākea with the Marine GeoGarage

“This summer’s research is an ideal way to look at the potential of unmanned aircraft to revolutionize marine science and management,” said Robbie Hood, director of NOAA Research’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program.

 Puma operator NOAA Corps Lt. j.g. Tanner Sims and NOAA scientist Todd Jacobs assemble the Puma for deployment. (Justin Rivera/NOAA)

“Unmanned aircraft extend our ability to study marine resources in remote places that are costly, difficult, and dangerous to reach with traditional ships and planes. They also allow us to see but not disturb species as we study them.”

Puma operator NOAA Corps Lt. j.g. Tanner Sims (standing) and NOAA scientist Todd Jacobs watch after launching the Puma at French Frigate Shoals. (Justin Rivera/NOAA)

NOAA scientists launched small unmanned aircraft called Pumas from the deck of NOAA Ship Hi‘ialakai in June to video and photograph green sea turtles, Hawaiian monk seals and seabirds.
The Puma, with its nine-foot wing-span, flew below 500 feet to take high quality video, infrared and still photographs.
The Puma also took images of marine debris at sea and surveyed coastal shoreline and bird nesting habitat.
“This is a great example of how investing in our ability to deploy state of the art technology to conduct observations in remote locations can provide critical data to help NOAA in our conservation and resilience missions,” said Todd Jacobs, a scientist working with NOAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program who is leading the Hawaii mission.
“The operation validated our hopes that we can use the aircraft in the monument for a variety of missions without harming the environment to get data that we wouldn’t otherwise get. We were able to survey in remote coves for monk seals and turtles in conditions that we may not have been able to safely land people ashore.”

Coordinator for NOAA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Program Todd Jacobs discusses the PUMA model, equipped with video and photo functionalities, is being utilized near La Push, Wash., to survey wildlife and locate for tsunami debris.

“The monk seal mission was wildly successful,” said Charles Littnan, NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center lead scientist for Hawaiian monk seal research.
“We were able to identify animals on the beach and in the water, identify mother-pup pairs, and get a sense of the age class of the animal – all things that are important for population monitoring. The data collected by the Puma will nicely supplement our current hands-on approach to the recovery of the species.”

NASA's Ikhana

The second part of the mission, beginning in mid-July, involves flights by NASA’s Ikhana from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kaua‘i.
NOAA is using the Ikhana to better understand vessel activity in sensitive areas of the monument, as well as assess its ability to survey marine species and locate marine debris over a larger area of the 139,797 square mile monument than Pumas could reach.
The Ikhana is a medium altitude, long-endurance aircraft with 66-foot wingspan that will be flown at about 24,000 feet while surveying for vessels.
It will drop down to lower altitudes when taking images of wildlife.
It’s equipped with radar that can scan over 100 miles, infrared and video cameras.

 A view of the launch boat from the Puma. (NOAA)

“These missions allow us to test the unmanned aircraft’s effectiveness in locating marine debris, such as ghost nets, and identifying high density debris areas,” said Kyle Koyanagi, Pacific Islands Regional Coordinator for NOAA’s Marine Debris Program.
“The UAS technology could supplement our existing surveys and benefit any efforts to remove debris at-sea before it reaches sensitive atolls, coral reefs, and beaches.”

This image was taken by the Puma of Trig Island.

Numerous sea turtles and some monk seals can be seen on the island. (NOAA)

Other mission goals include:

• Green Sea Turtles: Assess the ability of UAS to get baseline information on sea turtle habitat to help target future surveys during critical nesting and hatching periods
• Cetaceans: Assess the value of supplementing current manned ship and aircraft population surveys of some of the 20 species of cetaceans found in the monument waters
• Seabirds and vegetation: Assess the ability of UAS to obtain high quality, detailed imagery of seabirds, island vegetation and invasive species on islands within French Frigate Shoals to help manage endangered species and eradicate invasive grasses, insects and other non-native species
• Terrestrial habitat: Improve the monitoring of rapidly changing coastal habitat.
• Maritime vessel activity: Assess the value of UAS to better understand vessel activity and any potential risks to the monument’s natural, historic and cultural resources.

Scientists from NOAA Research, NOAA Fisheries, NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, NOAA’s Marine Debris Program, Papahānaumokuākea, and NASA are working together on this summer’s mission.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  Drones would revolutionize oceanic conservation, if they weren't illegal 
• YouTube : New solar Puma drone can stay airborne for nine hours 

Smile! Satellites can see your illegal fishing from space

Paul Woods (Skytruth) Snippet: "Automated Fishing Behavior Heatmap using SpaceQuest AIS data."

From Grist by Amelia Urry

If a fish falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it … wait, is that not how it goes
 Let’s put it this way: If a fishing boat illegally scoops up a load of fish in the middle of the ocean and no one is there to see it, it’s still illegal — but until now there has not been much anyone could do about it.

It turns out that satellites a few hundred miles above earth are a lot better at surveying the high seas than, say, a lone Coast Guard boat with a spyglass, especially in the most remote waters where fishermen may be used to acting with impunity — ignoring quotas, transferring fish from ship to ship, dumping bycatch, even changing the vessel’s name between ports like a Shakespearian youth slipping casually into drag.
Thanks to new projects in high-powered satellite surveillance, it may be possible to put an end to pirate fishing once and for all.

 A Taiwanese-flagged fishing vessel suspected of illegal fishing that was stopped and boarded by the US Navy in 2009.

This is good news for, let me see, about a billion people.
Illegal fishing takes as much as 26 million metric tons of fish from the sea every year, or about 1 in 5 fish sold, for a grand theft of $23.5 billion total (or, to put it yet another way, almost 16 times the GDP of Belize or a mere seventh of the market value of Facebook).
That’s money that doesn’t go to the fishermen who play by the rules, while lawbreakers put pressure on already overfished stocks like tuna and swordfish.
And while illegal fishing has been getting a lot of press – notably, President Obama issued a memo on the subject last month — it’s hard to make a real dent in it without some serious international cooperation.
Ships need to be traceable as they travel from one country’s maritime oversight into another’s, and enforcement needs to be stern enough that the risks of fishing illegally outweigh the rewards.

To this end, the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Ending Illegal Fishing Project teamed up with Oxford-based group Satellite Application Catapult to turn an all-seeing eye to the problem of piracy.
By combining satellite-gathered signals from ship transponders with other data, whether crowdsourced or supplied by fishing enforcement agencies, Catapult can piece together a cheat sheet that identifies any vessel by name history, ID number, and the details of its fishing license.

Once the relevant authorities have access to that information, they will be able to spot illegal or unreported fishing in even the most remote areas, then zoom in to make the arrest.
That big Ukranian ship hanging out in the marine protected area?
Probably not a tourist.

This pilot project from Catapult is the latest in a string of tools Pew has thrown at the problem of illegal and unreported fishing.
Last year, the group partnered with a small but spunky nonprofit located in West Virginia, SkyTruth, to use open-source satellite data to detect and document illegal fishing around Easter Island, a smidge of an island in a tuna-rich corner of the South Pacific, about 2,000 miles off the Chilean coast.

SkyTruth, under the guidance of geologist John Amos, had previously made its name collecting satellite images of mountaintop removal in Appalachia, fracking wells in Pennsylvania, and a certain infamous oil spill in the Gulf.
But while publicly available satellite imagery are a great resource if you know where to look (as in, look roughly where the mountain used to be), it is too expensive and time-consuming to scrutinize every visible mile of the ocean’s surface (turns out, the world is BIG).
So Amos and co. turned instead to other publicly available satellite data to tell them when and where to look for illegal fishing.

 SAR image with vessel detections (orange overlaid with AIS tracks (green).

Most vessels have a transponder system, called an Automatic Identification System, that sends and receives little declarative pings to help ships avoid collisions.
It just so happens that these pings can be intercepted by orbiting satellites, leaving a trail as a single ship pings its way across the sea.
The only problem is that fishing boats can easily send fake identifying information through their transponders, or shut them off altogether.
Sometimes fishermen do this just to keep other fishermen from getting wind of a good spot, but often it’s for more nefarious reasons.
In any case, all the untraceable boats taken together are sometimes called, rather imperiously, the “dark fleet.”
Without reliable IDs, the SkyTruth team instead tried to narrow in on the likely suspects by using low-res radar imagery to detect the presence of a ship, and sometimes even its speed and direction, then cross-referencing that with the transponder signal (or lack thereof).
The boats that did not identify themselves and could not otherwise be accounted for, SkyTruth surmised, were probably up to no good.

After a year of watching Easter Island, SkyTruth had enough data to estimate the total amount of fishing that was going on, and had singled out more than 40 unidentified vessels that had been unknown to Chilean maritime authorities.

As for Pew’s collaboration with Catapult, the aim is to take this kind of monitoring global, pumped up with some extra data not available to civilian groups like SkyTruth and made affordable for every country.
There are some policy measures needed to cinch the deal – confirmation that vessels are all ID’ed with a unique code from shipyard to scrapyard, measures to ensure accountability in ports, etc – but the final, crucial step is to supplement the proverbial stick of increased enforcement with the carrot of higher profits (yum).
Tony Long, director of Pew’s Ending Illegal Fishing Project, put it this way: “The vast majority of fishermen want to fish legally.” So why not give them a way to prove they’re doing it?

If retail chains demand traceability from their suppliers, and can promise them a premium price at the counter, then it’s in fishermen’s best interest to opt into a monitoring system.
Instead of putting the onus on enforcement agencies, this is a way to shift the burden of proof to the fishermen who want to do business legitimately.
Then, if the good guys keep their transponders on, it will be even easier to spot shady behavior from afar.
(You get a better ocean! You get a better ocean! Everybody gets a better ocean!)

Here I will utter environmentalists’ tepid catchphrase: All this is not going to happen overnight — but it is happening all the same.
The Catapult project is in advanced test stages before its official launch.
Amos believes there will be enough satellite coverage to generate a complete, uninterrupted picture of all the fishing in the world’s oceans in as little as three years.
SkyTruth is currently working with nonprofit Oceana and Google to visualize all the vessel tracking data available — that should launch at the end of the summer, and give internet dabblers a more immediate sense of the ways humans move around the ocean.
“Just getting people to see this stuff is an incredibly powerful gateway drug,” Amos said.
Which, if you like narcotic metaphors, is a pretty good one for the kind of citizen science that satellites have made possible.

Links :

• PewTrusts : Pew Joins With Top European Satellite Innovators to Fight Illegal Fishing
• YouTube : Global Ship tracking on the Google cloud
• GeoGarage blog : Google can track ships at sea / Can technology end pirate fishing?

Explore a shipwreck LIVE: Underwater project lets you watch in real-time as scientists navigate a sunken warship

A huge portion of the U.S.A. is underwater - what mysteries await us in these unexplored regions right in our own backyard?

Watch LIVE on  www.nautiluslive.org

 
From DailyMail by Jonathan O'Callaghan

• Noaa is exploring sunken ships at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico
• The scientists are streaming live footage from the event over the next week
• Exploration is being performed by the Hercules Remotely Operated Vehicle
• There are four ships that might be observed, all sunk in World War Two
• One is a German U-boat, the only U-boat ever sunk in the Gulf of Mexico
• The mission is called 'Exploring the Unknown America' and lasts 7-14 July

If you’ve ever wanted to see a shipwreck up close in real time, now’s your chance.
Over the next week the Hercules Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) will be exploring a section of the Gulf of Mexico home to a sunken German U-Boat and a U.S. passenger ship from World War Two.
And you can watch the vehicle’s exploration of the area live as it also observes brine pools, lakes and deep-water coral reefs, beginning late afternoon UK time (early afternoon in the U.S.) today.

Approximate location of Robert E. Lee wrech with the Marine GeoGarage

This mission is just the latest adventure this year for the Nautilus ship and its crew, operated by Noaa’s Ocean Exploration Trust.

E/V Nautilus dove on an sonar unknown target, thought to be a 500 foot-long shipwreck.
After a survey of the vessel the Corps of Exploration successfully identified the wreck as USS Peterson (DD-969).

It has already performed several successful missions and has more scheduled up to the end of the year as part of the 2014 Nautilus Expedition.
This particular project is known as ‘Exploring the Unknown America’, during which it may visit up to four shipwrecks.
Of the shipwrecks that might be visited, one is the German U-boat U-166, which sank with all hands on deck in 1942 from depth charges released by American patrol vessel PC-566.
This makes it the only known U-boat to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nautilus visits U-166, one of two U-Boat wrecks in the Gulf of Mexico.

The boat was sunk early on in World War II, sinking only four ships before being destroyed by a U.S. Naval vessel next to its final target, the Robert E. Lee, in 1942. 

The sinking of U-166 followed its own attack on the steam passenger ship Robert E. Lee, which it torpedoed and sent to the bottom of the ocean a few minutes prior.
Of the 270 passengers on the ship, however, 250 of them were saved by PC-566.

Wreck of the Robert E Lee

The Robert E. Lee was the final ship sunk by U-166, a German U-Boat that attacked vessels in the Gulf of Mexico during World War II.
They sit less than two miles apart on the seafloor after U-166 was destroyed by a U.S. naval ship.

The attack on the passenger ship was a result of Germany’s policy of ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’ in World War Two, which saw them target ships of any sort.

The wrecks of the two vessels are just a few miles apart in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Hercules remotely operated vehicle is preparing to explore the Gulf of Mexico over the next week including several shipwrecks, one being the German U-boat U-166 (gun shown).

This sank with all hands on deck in 1942 from depth charges released by American patrol vessel PC-566

Hercules is a neutrally buoyant yellow remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and is the workhorse of the Nautilus Exploration Program.

It is always used in tandem with another remotely operated vehicle, Argus, and is equipped with six thrusters that allow the pilots to 'fly' it in any direction
Hercules is equipped with six thrusters that allow the pilots to ‘fly’ it in any direction, plus two manipulator arms designed for collecting samples and recovering artifacts.
Video from Hercules' high-definition main camera is streamed up a fiber-optic cable to the control van on Nautilus, then out to the world.
It is capable of operating down to 13,100 feet (4,000 metres).

 The mission will be run from the Corps of Exploration's flagship vessel, E/V Nautilus (pictured). It is one of only two dedicated ships of exploration in the world. The 211-foot (64 metres) ship is equipped with all of the latest in ocean technology and can host a 31 person science team in addition to 17 crew members

Other potential sites for exploration by the Hercules include two oil tankers that were also sunk by German U-boats in World War Two, the Gulf Penn and Gulf Oil.
These tankers are particularly interesting because they have a high number of large corals growing on them.
The mission will be run from the Corps of Exploration’s flagship vessel, E/V Nautilus.
It is one of only two dedicated ships of exploration in the world.
The 211-foot (64 metres) ship is equipped with all of the latest in ocean technology and can host a 31 person science team in addition to 17 crew members.
The ship is outfitted for a two-tiered approach to exploration.

Dr. Larry Mayer of the University of New Hampshire covers E/V Nautilus's cruise exploring the deep waters of the Florida Straits.

First the team uses a multibeam sonar system to map unknown areas of the seafloor.
Once the data is analyzed and targets are chosen, they use remotely operated vehicles to collect video footage and a variety of samples.

Up to the end of 2014 the ship and its crew will continue to explore locations in the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding waters.