Sea expedition discovers a 3,300-foot-tall butte off California coast

The Saildrone Surveyor, shown in the San Francisco Bay, recently went on a mapping expedition off Alaska and California. “It’s commonly said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do the bottom of the ocean,” said Aurora Elmore of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Starting last summer, the Saildrone Surveyor — billed as the “world’s largest uncrewed ocean mapping vehicle” — spent several months exploring the Aleutian Islands in Alaska and the ocean off California in an expedition funded by NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. “Without the seamount’s unique ecosystems, they wouldn’t have enough food to eat; they wouldn’t be able to be at their preferred depth range.” Deep-sea fisheries could use the information to find new fishing grounds, she said. The recent discovery “is just a really good example of all the things we don’t yet know about the bottom of the ocean,” she said, noting that roughly 50% of the ocean floor in U.S. territorial waters remains unmapped.