On September NOAA has posted a superb animated digital mapping ocean bottom. A few thousand feet below our keel, this fantastic scenery is breathtaking. I can not help you to relay it with translation of their related comment.
TheOcean, it is the most prominent feature on Earth, and of immeasurable importance to life on the planet. But what would it look like if all the water disappeared ? Mountains and valleys eclipsing Everest, plates moving and submarine volcanoes, ripples, Plains. Though ships have mapped only a small portion of the ocean floor, satellites have been used to generate maps incredibly detailed terrain of the ocean. By sensing the minute gravitational changes that pull, push, and bulge the ocean surface, the bottom's shape can be inferred from space. These bathymetric maps reveal the incredibly dynamic terrain of the ocean. Where available, ship-based measurements are included to provide even higher detail.
This animation provides a tour of the ocean continental shelf slope deep pits from the data analyzed and archived by NOAA. Does it look familiar ? It is in fact the same data that Google has integrated in Google Earth & Ocean.
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Source : NOAA, translated from English by Francis Fustier
