The First Complete Map of the Ocean Floor Is Stirring Controversial Waters
I have actually worked in bathymetric survey projects in 4 different continents, and I can tell you there is a good reason why the ocean floor hasnt been mapped yet.For one its cost. A single survey ship (their rates are cheap now due to low oil prices), cost about USD30000 a day, A single ROV (>5k a day), ROV crew, divers, backup ROV(yes there needs to be 2 ROV's) why? one needs to recover the other in deepwater, ships crew, the survey crew etc... all usually comes to about 50k-70k a day in cost (and this is being really conservative). I am not including cost of bunkering (refueling the ship), crew transport to location, rotations, food, water, waste disposal etc and the list goes on. If you take USD100000 a day at an average of 60miles a day in length and probably a mile width, USD18.5 mil would probably not cover much of a distance. Dont forget the cost of processors to process the multibeam data (yes multibeam provides higher resolution because it collects more data points), the mappers-charters, engineers etc...etc. Just the cost alone is enough to put most people off. There is a reason why MH370 couldnt be found, and the cost was enormous that they had to call of the search.