Hydrography Critical to the World Economy Fulfilling as a Career

1. HydrographyCritical to the World EconomyFulfilling as a Career US Hydro 2011

2. History of Hydrographic Surveying History The oldest scientific agency in the U.S., the Coast Survey, was established in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson and Congress authorized a “survey to be taken of coasts of the United States".The history of hydrography is nearly as old as sailing, but that mandate from the President and Congress really “put the boats in the water”. The first Superintendent of the Coast Survey was Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, who brought together mathematicians, cartographers, geodesists, meterologists, hydrographers, topographers, sailors, laborers and administrators with the goal of surveying and charting the coast of the United States. By the way, the job’s not finished!

3. What Is Hydrography? As defined by NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey, hydrography is “the science which deals with the measurement and description of the physical features of bodies of water and their littoral land areas.  Special emphasis is usually placed on the elements that affect safe navigation and the publication of such information in a suitable form for use in navigation.” Boundaries! It’s almost never this much Fun! And luckily, it’s seldom this miserable!

4. Fortunately, Hydrography can often involve some of this!

5. Ahydrographic survey can provide such descriptive information as depth of water (also known as bathymetry), the nature of the seafloor material, and the presence of objects or features on the seafloor.

6. The first official hydrographic survey in the U.S. was conducted along the south shore of Long Island in 1834. In 1839, the U.S. government produced its first nautical chart. Early hydrographic surveys consisted of depths measured by sounding pole and hand lead line with positions determined by three-point sextant fixes to mapped reference points. In 1904, weighted wire-drag surveys were introduced into hydrography. The basic principle being to drag a wire attached to two vessels. If the wire (set at a certain depth by a system of weights and buoys) encountered an obstruction it would become taut and form a "V" revealing the depth and position of submerged rocks and other obstructions.

7. The 1930’s saw the development and implementation of single-beam echo sounders using sound to measure the distance of the sea floor directly below a vessel. By running a series of lines at a specified spacing, single beam echo sounders and fathometers greatly increased the speed of the survey process by allowing more data points to be collected. However, this method still yielded gaps in quantitative depth information between survey lines. In the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's a number of evolutionary concepts were advanced that fundamentally changed how we look at and map the seafloor. Side Scan Sonar technology was developed as a qualitative means of obtaining the sonar equivalent of an aerial photograph and improving the ability to identify submerged wrecks and obstructions..

8. We still go to where the data has to be collected, no matter how remote.

9. Current Technology: Multibeam swath systems made it possible to obtain quantitative depth information for 100% of the bottom in a survey area.

10. Hydrographic surveying techniques and procedures continue to evolve with both academia and industry pushing the technology envelope with new products in the search for efficiency in data collection and processing. Emerging Technology: AUV: Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

11. LIDAR: Light Detection And Ranging Huge areas of coastline can now be surveyed at a rate never before dreamed of using airborne LIDAR.

12. Despite the advances in technology, opportunities for individuals with a love of science, the outdoors, and a little adventure can still find rewarding and satisfying employment in all aspects of Hydrography. Whether collecting data in the field, processing data in the office or planning surveys, hydrography is a field with challenges for all! The Human Element:

13. What Bears? Challenges!!

14. The Job Ahead

15. More than a boat ride and a pay check? The US Marine Transportation System (MTS) Vital Statistics Includes: • 1,000 harbor channels • 326 ports • over 3,700 terminals • 238 lock chambers • about 100,000 aids to navigation • 25,000 miles of inland, intracoastal, and coastal waterways

16. 5,400 Passenger, Oasis of the Seas at Terminal 18 Port Everglades, FL The MTS links: • 174,000 miles of rail • 460,000 miles of pipeline • 45,000 miles of interstate highways Each year the MTS: • moves over 95 percent of the volume of overseas trade • transports 134 million ferry passengers, 5 million cruise ship passengers, and 70 million recreational boaters • contributes more than $742 billion to the U.S. GDP and employs more than 13 Million people • moves 720.2 million short tons of commodities on lakes and internal waterways

17. Interestingly, U.S. coastal waters have never been completely surveyed. In areas that have been surveyed, approximately 50 percent of the sounding data shown on NOAA nautical charts is pre-1940, collected by antiquated lead line soundings and wire drags.

18. NOAA’s priority surveying focus, 500,000 square nautical miles (SNM) of navigationally significant EEZ waters deemed most in need of survey • NOAA has resources to accomplish roughly only 3000 SNM a year between contract and in-house vessels. This equates to less than one percent of navigationally significant area surveyed each year. • At this rate, with three to four ships, plus current funding levels for complementary contract efforts, it will take over 100 years to survey just the areas routinely transitedby commercial shipping, ferries, cruise ships, Navy and Coast Guard vessels, and other ships with critical contributions to the economy and defense.

19. If all that was not bad enough News? • Another of NOAA’s critical missions is to survey the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and to provide the nation with accurate, consistent, up-to-date national shoreline. • The national shoreline provides the baseline data for demarcating U.S. marine territorial limits, including the Exclusive Economic Zone

20. The Bottom Line • NOAA’s current Goal is to survey and process the data for 10,000 SNM of seafloor annually. • NOAA must replace its aging hydrographic survey ships on schedule to sustain current capability and avoid diminishing critical expertise in a function so key to U.S. economic security. • NOAA must build a seasoned staff of dedicated hydrographers competent to not only conduct surveys and analyze tides, but also to provide oversight of contract surveys, evaluate new equipment, and provide national and international leadership. • Equally important, NOAA must increase its capacity to contract for hydrographic surveys. There is simply no way to survey 10,000 square nautical miles of navigationally significant waters every year without contract support. Since 1994, NOAA’s funding for survey contracts has risen from $0 to $30 million per year, roughly half of its budget for hydrographic data collection.

21. Summary • NOAA should take a more aggressive approach to shoreline and hydrographic data collection and processing. • We recognize that resources are scarce government-wide, but the cost of adequately funding NOAA pales beside the costs of incident response, clean-up, environmental damage, litigation, and the lost lives, property, and revenues that can result if a vessel grounds or strikes an obstruction. • We strongly believe that the critical and growing national needs for updated hydrographic surveys and shoreline maps demand an increase in productivity and justify the necessary increase in public investment. • In an ever-changing marine environment, modern and up-to-date hydrographic products significantly reduce operational risk and improve safety for users of NOAA navigation data. MOST WANTED HYDROGRAPHIC SERVICES IMPROVEMENTS FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE UPDATE REPORT 2010 HYDROGRAPHIC SERVICES REVIEW PANEL http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/ocs/hsrp/docs/2010_Most_Wanted_%20Hydrographic_Services_Improvements.pdf

22. Where does THSOA fit in this dilemma of too many miles to survey, but not enough funds to pay for it? Keynote Speaker 2007, Dr. Robert Ballard • THSOA is not a PAC, but it does provide a national forum for the discussion of both the problem and possible solutions.

23. Through the networking opportunities provided by its national conference, held every two years, members are able to contact those directly involved with contracting in both NOAA and the USACE. • At each conference, the best available technology for Hydrographic Survey is on display by both vendors and users. • Beyond presenting the Hydrographic Conference, the national goals of THSOA are primarily educational. Our Charter is to foster the advance of hydrographic science and to introduce the next generation of hydrographers to the science through student outreach programs and scholarship awards.

24. Through Education there is hope!

25. Marine Science B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees Marine Science is a multidisciplinary field focusing on the study of oceanic processes. Research and training in the Marine Science degree programs involves physical, chemical, biological, and geological oceanography along with remote sensing, ocean acoustics, and numerical modeling. We have active research projects in coastal and open ocean, large lakes, and riverine and coastal wetland settings, and those that focus on issues including climate change, biofuels development, environmental quality, hypoxia and carbon cycling.

26. Hydrographic Science M.S. degree Hydrographic Science is the science of measuring and depicting those parameters necessary to describe the precise nature and configuration of the seabed, its geographical relationship to the land mass, and the characteristics and dynamics of the sea. These parameters include bathymetry, the precise location and identification of hazards to navigation, tides, currents, waves, physical properties of sea water, geology and geophysics.

27. The Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (CCOM)/ Joint Hydrographic Center (JHC) is a recently established University of New Hampshire program aimed at creating a national center for expertise in ocean mapping and hydrographic sciences. Guided by a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the JHC operates in partnership with NOAA's National Ocean Service. The CCOM is a University center that expands the scope of interaction and cooperation with the private sector, other government agencies and universities. In addition to NOAA support, CCOM currently has projects underway funded by the US Geological Survey, the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Research Lab, DARPA, NSF and several private sector partners. The centers focus their activities on two major tasks, an educational task, aimed at creating a learning center that will promote and foster the education of a new generation of hydrographers and ocean mapping scientists, and a research task aimed at developing and evaluating a wide range of state-of-the-art hydrographic and ocean mapping technologies and applications.

28. Contact: The Hydrographic Society of America (THSOA) 451 Hungerford Drive, Suite 119-360 Rockville, MD 20850-5148 WWW. THSOA.org