Coastal mapping helps guide policy

A new scientific project to map the sea floor off the California coast has yielded some intriguing insights — such as the location of critical underwater habitat and the reason why the waves at Mavericks in Half Moon Bay are among the biggest in the country.

The California Coast State Waters Mapping Project, a collaborative effort between state and federal scientific and conservation agencies, used sophisticated sonar and aerial light detection instruments to create, for the first time, detailed 3-D imagery of every fault, crevice and reef in a portion of state waters, according to the study's authors.

The new technology will prove useful in many ways, from charting areas that must be protected in order for certain fish species to survive, to where a tsunami is likely to strike next, according to Rikk Kvitek, a professor at California State University, Monterey Bay, and lead researcher of the study. It even offered a few little surprises, such as the location of a long-forgotten shipwreck.

"The sort of mapping that we're doing has never been done before," explained Kvitek. "The best information we have on the sea floor is based on nautical charts that date from the 1940s."

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