Undersea maps reveal Great Barrier Reef in unparalleled detail

A visualisation of the Great Barrier Reef based on a joint project between Geoscience Australia, James Cook University and the Australian Hydrographic Service.

The visualization shows the Great Barrier Reef sea floor in unprecedented detail.

The bathymetry dataset is produced at 30 metre resolution using a combination of historical and new sea floor mapping data and is a vast improvement on the previously available 250 metre resolution dataset.

The new dataset covers an area of 1.7 million square kilometres and provides a unique understanding of the structure of the Reef.

From Geosciences AU

High-resolution sea floor maps released today show 1.5 million square kilometres of Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef in unprecedented detail.
The maps are the product of a collaborative project between James Cook University, Geoscience Australia and the Australian Hydrographic Service.

This is the first high-resolution mapping of the sea floor of the entire Great Barrier Reef.
Attribution: "Australian Hydrographic Service, Geoscience Australia, James Cook University" 

JCU's research leader, Dr Robin Beaman, initiated the project in 2009.
"The Great Barrier Reef data is the first in a series of '30-metre' datasets that will be released as part of this project. This represents the highest resolution depth model of the Great Barrier Reef, to date," he said.
"We're using cutting-edge scientific techniques to combine historical and newly-acquired bathymetry (undersea mapping) data of the entire northern coastline of Australia," he said.
"Along with the quality of the new data we've acquired, we've also been able to access undersea mapping data collected over the past few decades by government and university research programs."
"Our partners at Geoscience Australia will be releasing open source data of large parts of the coastline as it becomes available. The grids we've built will enhance our understanding of the terrain of the sea floor in shallow waters off the coast of northern Australia."

 new 30 m bathymetry gridding
Attribution: "Australian Hydrographic Service, Geoscience Australia, James Cook University"

Chief of Geoscience Australia's Environmental Geoscience Division, Dr Stuart Minchin, said he was pleased that his team was able to get on board and support this important project with such wide-ranging potential.
"The dataset we've released today maps the entire Great Barrier Reef with data that is around eight times higher resolution than what was available previously. This is a vast improvement and it creates huge opportunities for the scientific and policy community, most importantly for the environmental management of the reef," Dr Minchin said.
"Having greater knowledge of the shape of the reef will be a critical tool for the government agencies responsible for its protection.

This gives those organizations a far more detailed view of the reef with which they can identify new reef structures and coral formations.
"Bathymetry data is also an important input for oceanographic modelling which can be used to improve our knowledge of climate change impacts, marine biodiversity and species distribution. It will also support modelling of tides and ocean currents.
"We've been able to support the team at JCU, who are specialists in this kind of marine research by contributing our resources and expertise to the project. We've also worked with the Australian Hydrographic Service to bring their vast stores of marine mapping data into the project as well.
"Collaborating with these organisations over the past four years has seen us map the entire northern Australian coastline, including the Great Barrier Reef. We saw the value in JCU's work and the potential of these high-quality datasets to provide greater certainty on Australia's maritime boundaries for government and other maritime operators."

 Northerly view of Hook and Line Reefs off Airlie Beach.

Depths are coloured red (shallow) to blue (deep), over a depth range of 84 metres. 
Attribution: "Australian Hydrographic Service, Geoscience Australia, James Cook University"

Hook reef with the GeoGarage platform 

(AHS nautical raster charts overlaid upon Google Maps satellite imagery)

Easterly view of Sudbury and Moore Reefs off Cairns.

Depths are coloured red (shallow) to blue (deep), over a depth range of 100 metres.
Attribution: "Australian Hydrographic Service, Geoscience Australia, James Cook University"

Moore & Sudbury Reefs with the GeoGarage platform

(AHS nautical raster charts overlaid upon Google Maps satellite imagery)

Westerly view of One Tree and Heron Reefs off Gladstone.

Depths are coloured red (shallow) to blue (deep), over a depth range of 100 metres.
Attribution: "Australian Hydrographic Service, Geoscience Australia, James Cook University"

 Wistary, Heron, Sykes, One Tree Reefs with the GeoGarage platform 

(AHS nautical raster charts overlaid upon Google Maps satellite imagery)

Dr Beaman said he was pleased that the Great Barrier Reef bathymetry was the first dataset to be released, given the reef's unique marine environment.

"Being based in northern Queensland, JCU prides itself on being at the forefront of scientific research when it comes to the reef; we are committed to providing government and researchers with information that will ultimately help protect it," he said.

The series of datasets produced through this project will provide a detailed view of the marine geography of Australia's northern coastline, providing greater certainty on the location and extent of the country's maritime boundaries.

The datasets will support safety of life at sea, the enforcement of law, and government operations.

Case study: Captain Cook and the Endeavour

When Captain Cook's ship the Endeavour first entered the Great Barrier Reef on 20 May 1770, Cook found an 'insane labyrinth' of coral.

The ship ran aground on what is now called Endeavour Reef.

Captain Cook made painstaking maps of the region, such as this section from Cape Tribulation to Cape Flattery.

Captain Cook's map of the Great Barrier Reef, from Cape Tribulation to Cape Flattery

 Cape Tribulation to Cape Flattery with the GeoGarage platform 

(AHS nautical raster charts overlaid upon Google Maps satellite imagery)

In 2009, we had 250 m bathymetry grids of this area:

250 m bathymetry data of the Great Barrier Reef, from Cape Tribulation to Cape Flattery

The new 30 m bathymetry grids of this region show it in extraordinary detail.

30 m bathymetry data of the Great Barrier Reef, from Cape Tribulation to Cape Flattery

Links :

• GeoSciences : To learn more on the Great Barrier Reef sea floor data  / Open data
• GeoGarage blog : Ancient undersea landslide discovered in Australia /Hydrographic Surveys: Surveying Australia / Effective surveying tool for shallow-water zones / Vast reef discovered behind Great Barrier Reef / 'Un-mappable' Great Barrier Reef finally mapped ... / 3-D maps reveal depths of sea floor
   

2017: one year time lapse of surface winds over the South America and the Atlantic

This animation shows a full, one year time lapse animation of surface winds from Jan 1, 2017 until Jan 1, 2018.

The data come from NWS's GFS numerical weather model 

Blue colors represent slower winds.

Greens and yellows are faster winds.

Streamlines show the direction of the wind in each frame of the animation.

A few things to notice:

1. Look for the trade winds. Can you find the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone?

2. Where are the "Roaring Forties" and why do they occur?

3. What occurs regularly in the North Atlantic / Caribbean / Gulf of Mexico, but very rarely in the South Atlantic? (No occurrences in 2017.)

Norway NHS layer update in the GeoGarage platform

148 nautical raster charts updated

see GeoGarage news

World's first life saver drone : a drone saves two swimmers in Australia

A drone dropped a “rescue pod” into waters south of Brisbane, saving two swimmers in distress.

 original video

From NYTimes by Isabella Kwai

A practice session for Australian lifeguards who were testing a new drone turned into a real rescue when the drone helped save two swimmers at a beach in New South Wales.

On Thursday morning, Jai Sheridan, a lifeguard supervisor who was operating the drone, was alerted to two young men caught in turbulent surf with 10-foot swells.
Mr. Sheridan then steered the drone toward the swimmers.

In video of the incident taken from the drone, it can be seen releasing a yellow “rescue pod” that inflates in the water.
The two swimmers grabbed the pod, and with its support they made their way to shore.
They were fatigued, but not hurt, Surf Life Saving New South Wales, a volunteer organization, said in a statement.
The rescue took just 70 seconds. “On a normal day that would have taken our lifeguards a few minutes longer,” Mr. Sheridan said.

Little Ripper Lifesaver drones use world first algorithm technology to spot sharks for public safety at beaches.

Fitted with onboard sirens and voice messages in multiple languages they also warn people of any danger.

The lifesaving drones have multiple deployable automatically inflating rescue tubes capable of supporting up to 4 people in a rescue situation.

The drone used for the rescue, known as a Little Ripper unmanned aerial vehicle, is also part of a shark-spotting program being rolled out across Australian beaches this summer.
It uses an algorithm to automatically recognize sharks.
“The applications in the water are just phenomenal,” said Michael Blumenstein, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who oversaw the team that developed the shark-spotting software. “The amount of payload that these drones carry enable them to be really be versatile.”

Drones and AI Take On Killer Sharks Down Under in Australia.

Whether or not shark attacks are a major problem in Australia, the Australian government has devoted an enormous amount of resources into trying to mitigate the risk of sharks near popular beaches.

They've tried nets to keep the sharks out, they've tried electronic gadgets to dissuade them, and they've tried lots of different ways of killing them, without much in the way of evidence that any of it is particularly effective.

After six months of trials, the latest and most robot-y idea is about to be implemented: drones will start patrolling some Australian beaches next month, using cameras and some AI-backed image analysis software to spot lurking sharks much better than humans can.

Humans aren't particularly good at identifying sharks on aerial imagery.

We can manage a 20-30 percent accuracy rate, which means both identifying other things as sharks (kinda bad) and misidentifying sharks as other things (way worse).

As with many tasks of this kind, a machine learning system does much better: once it's been trained on labeled aerial videos of sharks, whales, dolphins, surfers, swimmers, boats, and whatever else, the software is 90 percent accurate at telling humans to panic because there's a shark somewhere.

And when implemented on a drone, the system really does tell people to panic, using a loudspeaker to warn them that there's a shark in the water.

The drones come from an Australian company called Westpac Little Ripper, which modifies a few different kinds of commercial drones for tasks like shark spotting as well as general life-saving operations, such as dropping beacons and even rafts.

The larger Little Ripper drones are gas powered and can fly for hours, which is nice, but they somehow cost up to US $250,000 each.

In cases involving rough surf, remote locations or natural disasters, where conditions may be hazardous and time is a factor, Professor Blumenstein said, drones are able to help operators assess a situation without endangering human lives.
Farmers have also found practical applications for drones, using them to efficiently assess the health of their crops, for example.
But in crowded urban areas, Professor Blumenstein said, security concerns may still be an issue. “People are still, I think, wary of low-hanging hovering objects, and rightfully so,” he said.

A lifesaving example of the power of AI in edge devices is demonstrated using a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and the Intel® Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick.

The Little Ripper Lifesaver UAV is currently using cloud-based AI to monitor the Australian coastline. 

n Intel proof-of-concept using Intel Movidius technology shows that AI processing could be done directly on the device, allowing for more immediate danger detection and response time.

In December, the state government of New South Wales announced that it would invest 430,000 Australian dollars, or $345,000, into drone technology as part of a trial on the state’s North Coast.
John Barilaro, deputy premier of New South Wales, said after Thursday’s rescue that the investment had already paid off.
“Never before has a drone, fitted with a flotation device, been used to rescue swimmers like this,” Mr. Barilaro said.

 Australia is testing out a drone with shark-spotting software

to keep swimmers and sharks out of danger.

The software developed by Professor Blumenstein’s team could soon become a vital tool for lifeguards.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t use it to automatically detect people in the water,” he said.

Links :

• YouTube : Drones detect Sharks at Lighthouse Beach, Ballina / Shark-spotting drones on patrol at Australian beaches
• Sydney Morning Herald : Drone used to save two swimmers caught in rough surf at Lennox Head
• ABC : Drone helps rescue teens just hours after being unveiled for trial at Lennox Head  
• BBC : Caister lifeboat crew trials drones for rescues

115 years ago, this Arctic expedition ended in disaster

film by Anthony Fiala
(YouTube)

From National Geographic by Nina Stochlic

On the 130th anniversary of National Geographic’s founding, see what happened during an attempt to reach the North Pole.

Pacing sled dogs, bundled explorers, and meandering ice floes could be scenes from any early Arctic expedition.
But the 23 minutes of footage captured near the North Pole 116 years ago isn’t just the earliest film in National Geographic's archives—it’s a peek into a pair of wildly disastrous scientific adventures.

 Members of the second Ziegler Polar Expedition set out for the Franz Josef Land archipelago in 1903.

The following year, the ship seen in the background sunk, leaving them stranded.

At the turn of the 20th century, America was in a polar frenzy.
During the 1890s, a Swedish balloon expedition, two Norwegians on skis, and an Italian Duke on a steam whaler all failed to reach the North Pole.
Meanwhile, famous authors like Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, and Edgar Allan Poe set their characters against the mysterious and stark Arctic, and reputable sources theorized that a lost race of giants resided on the top of the Earth.
In his 1885 book, “Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole,” the president of Boston University proposed that Atlantis, King Arthur’s Avalon, and the Garden Eden were all located in the North Pole.
“These ideas were taken very seriously and no one could refute them because no one had ever been there,” says PJ Capelotti, an anthropology professor and associate of The Polar Center at Penn State University.
Whoever became the first to reach the unknown arctic landscape was guaranteed fame and fortune stretching beyond their lifetime.
Fueled by wealthy financiers and public fascination, the “polar dash” kicked into high gear in the 1900s.

The first Ziegler Polar Expedition brough along photographer Anthony Fiala, who took this picture in 1901.

He logged it as "Alger Island showing snowcapped peak." 

Evelyn Baldwin had more Arctic interest than experience until businessman William Ziegler, known as the “baking soda king,” chose him to lead an ambitious expedition to the North Pole.
Convinced by a dramatized version of an attempt to make a forward base camp in the northern islands of Franz Josef Land, Ziegler put his trust and unlimited funds in the hands of a man whose entire resume was either “outright fabrication or exaggeration,” says Capelotti.
“I do not want to see any but an American win the honor of the discovery of the North Pole, when so many of our brave country­men have sacrificed their lives in the effort to attain it,” Baldwin recounted Ziegler telling him in an announcement of the expedition in McClure’s Magazine.

In 1901, the expedition landed on Alger Island to set up a camp sight.

Evelyn Baldwin, the leader, carries an American flag.

Baldwin was confident this attempt “to determine the secrets so jealously guarded by the Ice Sphinx of the North” would succeed where others had failed.
In 1901, Baldwin’s 42-man team set off for Franz Josef Land, the world’s northernmost archipelago.
On board was Anthony Fiala, a budding photographer who left his day job as a newspaper sketch artist and engraver to join the expedition.
Over the next year, Fiala produced what is “very likely the earliest footage of any expedition to the Arctic,” according to Capelotti, whose book, “The Greatest Show in the Arctic,” chronicles their attempt.

A photograph from September 8, 1901, shows a glacier

between the islands that comprise Franz Josef Land.

Twenty-three minutes of surviving footage, likely taken during the spring of 1902, show roving dogs, balloon launches, and disassembled camps.
It was donated to National Geographic in 1986 by Fiala’s grandson, Ronald Fiala, and is the oldest film in our archives.

Seaman D.S. Mackiernan and First Assistant Scientist Russell Porter return to camp with their sled dogs in the spring of 1905.

Fiala later described his tactics for working in the -30-degree tundra without overexposing or cracking the film.
He used a bioscope—a motion camera—to “secure views of men, dogs and ponies moving over the ice-fields,” he wrote in a 1907 article for National Geographic, along with “the advance of the America [ship] through the ice, and, if possible, a bear fight.”
To prevent the film from becoming brittle as he worked he’d wrap the camera in warm blankets.

The expedition had been stranded for two years by the time a rescue ship reached them.

Anthony Fiala is pictured at the time the lost explorers first met their rescuers. 

The trip was a failure.
Baldwin’s team hardly progressed north, his leadership skills were sparse, and he was later described by Ziegler as a guy who stood around smoking cigarettes and eating pie, says Capelotti.
When they returned empty handed in 1902, Baldwin was fired.

A carcass of a polar bear is hauled aboard the ship of the second Ziegler Polar Expedition.

But Ziegler still longed for his namesake expedition to reach the North Pole, and quickly launched a second attempt with Fiala at the helm.
Before departing, the pair met with Alexander Graham Bell, National Geographic’s then-president, and Gilbert H.
Grosvenor, its editor, who solidified support for the mission.
Grosvenor’s wife designed a special flag with the Society’s name for the expedition to take with them.
(This flag still accompanies National Geographic explorers around the world.)

"Observations were made on the floating ice for longitude and for magnetic declination," wrote Ziegler of his team's scientific work.

The second trip was even more disastrous.
Fiala struck out for the Arctic in 1903, but his ship sank, leaving the expedition stranded on an island in the Franz Josef Archipelago for two years.
“They were two very different expeditions in composition and leadership, but united in one thing: their incompetence,” says Capelotti.
Amazingly, all but one man survived, thanks to a steady supply of polar bear and walrus meat and the discovery of a vein of coal.
They were found by a rescue ship and returned to America in 1905.
Unfortunately, Ziegler had died earlier that year, likely assuming the worst.

Members of the second Ziegler Polar Expedition dig in to their dinners.

Despite being stranded for two years they managed to hunt enough to stay well fed. 

A few scientific findings did come out of the expedition: A book by Chief Scientist William J.
Peters—comprising meteorology and topography of the Arctic—was published by National Geographic in 1907, which included First Assistant Scientist Russell Porter’s maps, and Fiala’s photography.

“What he did had not been done by anyone before and has not been done much since,” says Capelotti about Fiala.
“It's a glimpse of who we thought we were and what we thought we were doing.
The motion footage allows us to look at it through their eyes.”

In 1909, both Robert Peary and Frederick Cook claimed competing titles of the the first to reach the North Pole.
Whether either really did has since been disputed.
The first verified team to reach the North Pole overland didn’t get there until 1968.

Fiala’s next trip took him to the jungle, as he followed Theodore Roosevelt’s so-called “River of Doubt” expedition down an Amazon tributary.
He left after six months and launched Fiala Outfits, an expedition supply company selling everything from elephant rifles to dog sledges in New York City.

The islands of the Franz Josef Land archipelago are almost entirely covered by glacier ice and sparse vegetation.

Baldwin never went on another expedition.
He worked as a Navy clerk and died after being hit by a car in the 1930s.
But he had a final taste of polar glory—on the gravestone he likely commissioned hails him as an arctic explorer.
“He's buried under his own arctic myth in the middle of Kansas,” says Capelotti.

Capelotti himself got a starring role in the lore that still surrounds the North Pole.
After an expedition to Franz Josef Land in 2006, he was the center of an Internet conspiracy theory claiming he’d discovered a race of giants and covered it up for the government.
“The idea that there's a biblical or extraterrestrial thing up there that's unexplainable is really persistent in our culture,” he says, laughing.

But there are other similarities between the gilded age missions to the North Pole and 21st century dreams of exploration: “You've got millionaires planning trips to the moon.”

Franz Josef Land with the GeoGarage (NHS nautical chart)

Wherever future explorers go, they’ll return with images and video to share with the masses, even if cameras no longer need to be swaddled in blankets like Fiala’s.
In his 1907 article he imagined the potential this held: “There is still land to be conquered; and it is good to know that when these unknown places are found and the flags of discovery are planted, that with the help of the sun and modern chemistry, we will all be able to view with the explorer what had once been forbidden and mysterious territory.”

Links :

• National Geographic : Anthony Fiala’s description of surviving two years stranded in the Arctic /