Meet the deep-sea explorer with a plan to map the whole ocean floor

Greenwater Foundation and Victor Vescovo, renowned for his record-breaking deep-sea dives, are spearheading a global effort to map the largely unexplored ocean floor, specifically 84,000 sq miles of coastal waters in 14 regions across the globe. Unique partnerships like this are driving innovation in ocean mapping technologies like satellite-derived bathymetry to accelerate the mapping process, as well as provide access to coastal and marine areas unsafe to directly map. “We put Fiji on the list because this past summer a Fijian patrol boat ran aground because there was no good navigational chart. We threw in the Sulu Sea too [in the southwest Philippines]. It’s basically full of pirates, so if we send boats and drones, they aren’t going to last,” explained Commander G. Mark Miller, founder of Greenwater.