The Ocean Floor

Even though the majority of us have never seen the ocean floor, we assume it to be mostly flat and similar to the kind of rocky floor you would find if you swam farther out from the coast. But if you swam far enough, you'd discover that the ocean floor is anything but consistent or flat. It has just as many different types of landscape as you'd find on land, if not more, including enormous mountains, deep canyons that lead nowhere, underwater volcanoes, and everything else.

Due to the fact that humans have only ever been able to map around 15% of the ocean floor, it is also the area of the ocean that is least explored. Multibeam bathymetry, a sonar-based method, is used to map the ocean, and numerous contemporary ships are outfitted with multibeam bathymeters. However, the majority of commercial ships only go over specific sea routes, leaving a sizable portion of it uncharted.