“An emerging sonar technology that scans the sea floor at centimeter-scale resolution is dazzling researchers with its potential. Commercial synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) devices, originally developed by the military to identify explosive mines, are now being deployed by scientists such as Yizhaq Makovsky, a marine geoscientist at the University of Haifa. When he first saw how SAS instruments could pick out the bumps of tiny seafloor burrows, he says, ‘We realized this was a game changer.’

Only a Rhode Island–size patch of the world’s deep-sea floors has been observed up close, according to a study published on 7 May in Science Advances. That imaged area is likely to grow with the adoption of SAS, which can efficiently reveal fine details in wide swaths of the sea floor, unmasking its biology and geology. It could also be crucial in upcoming fights between deep-sea miners and the environmentalists who seek to limit seafloor exploitation.”

From Science.